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If you read my first book, Using the Word, you might remember that I eventually developed a morning time with God built around moving four ribbons through the Bible: Psalms, OT, Epistles, Gospels. Every so often I’d mix in something different: one year I wrote the Psalms instead of reading them, one year I worked through Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises with a bunch of evangelicals, sometimes I read one (or two) of Barclay’s Daily Bible Studies on a particular book, which for a season, slowed down the forward movement of one of the ribbons.

Henri Nouwen was invited to speak on Christian Leadership for the Center for Human Development in Washington D.C shortly after beginning work at Daybreak, one of the L’Arche community houses for disabled people. The shift from being a writer and lecturer, to intimate involvement with people who didn’t care about literary or academic honors, radically changed Nouwen’s view of ministry. The book, In the Name of Jesus, is taken from that talk on leadership. It is a short evening’s read and after a bit of perusing, I brought it home to read. Again.

So many different ways to publish. What's a writer to do?

There are, for example, my *In the Spirit* columns in the Sentinel.

The reason you haven’t been getting my newsletters is that I stopped writing them. You were NOT de-friended as several people thought. (I don’t think I’ve ever de-friended anyone — I just get sufficiently obnoxious that people de-friend me.) I am now writing the newsletters again. I’ve missed you. If you want off this list, just let me know.

"A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked."~ Author Unknown

The nice thing about books on Prayer is that — unlike sermons or videos that drag you relentlessly on — if you feel a stirring within, you can stop, wonder, think and pray. Then, when you realize you are now only contemplating what you’ll have for dinner, you can resume reading where you left off. A lovely way to spend time with the Lord.

I'm reading GOD'S SECRETARIES by Adam Nicolson, a book that Carolyn brought to the June Literary Party on Royalty. Subtitled The Making of the King James Bible, the book is an engaging exploration of the political, religious and social landscape of England in the early 1600's. The people and positions of the Biblical translating team and the contexts they operated in reveal much about the reformation, the antecedents of our separation of church and state, and the face of the church, which today still holds many of the same the tensions that were at work in Jacobean England.

We had our own *passing through the locked door* experience at The Word Shop over Easter. I closed on Good Friday, leaving a note on the door that we would be closed through Monday April 1. Lillian and Krista held down the fort on Tuesday; I showed up for the First Tuesday Writers at 7:00.

The writers had a wonderful time crowded around the back room table. Terrie, who attended for the first time, wrote a charming piece about dropping off a couple bags of books and coming upon a stranger in the back room of the store, with no staff around. Cute.

Last week the five editors of This is Terrible: the Writer's Lament met around the back table of The Word Shop. The mood was cautiously victorious. Our book was now in hand -- in boxes, in stacks -- and it looked . . . it looked GOOD. "It looks like a book." one of us said with some reverence.

We all giggled. I had said the same thing to the printer, who had responded with an odd look. When I had given Shannon her contributor's copy, she'd said, "This is an odd thing to say but, well . . . it looks like a book."

I went to an Order of St. Luke Healing conference held at ECCO, the conference center in Oakhurst, where we have attended family camp for twenty years. Being in that setting with a new group of people who were also committed to functioning in the authority of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, brought into focus the work of God and the ministry experience that has been built up year by year in our annual week at the Gerard Family Camp.

Recently I attended a new Anglican church. The priests had been ordained two weeks previously, most of the congregation had come from evangelical churches. It was the first baptism in the church. They were learning to dance.

Meanwhile, in Roman Churches, a few lines of the mass have been changed and whole congregations that use to smoothly whirl around the floor with their eyes on their dance partner, are suddenly stumbling en-masse over the new steps.

Its all somewhat amusing, and very sweet.

I'm not reading as many books as I used to. This fact is not immediately evident from the stacks on my coffee table, but a careful scrutiny of said stacks would reveal that the same books have been teetering atop each other for too many months.

The culprit is my iPad, a small bookish sized device, which masquerades as a book, but which does not deliver the substance or the nutrition of a book. Instead it spews email, tweets and facebook chatter which, like potato chips or m&m's are momentarily tasty, but lack long term nutritional value.