Spring Update

Spring 2009
Dear friends,

I'm happy to announce that I graduated from Duke University Divinity School on May 10 with a Master's in Theological Studies. It felt very, very good. I'm so thankful for the many people who encouraged me on that journey, including my patient readers. Now I can turn my energies back to freelancing--hurrah!

A few quick updates in that regard:

• Check out my articles (and other great stuff by Lewis scholars & authors) on the HarperCollins C. S. Lewis blog.

• The Northern Michigan C. S. Lewis festival is now hosting a week-long C. S. Lewis Summer Academy. In addition to morning seminars with Chris Mitchell of the Wade Center at Wheaton College, I'll be leading writing workshops in the afternoons. You can't ask for a more gorgeous getaway than Petoskey, MI in July! It truly is "Narnia and the North." (Hey teachers: CEUs are available, so check out the website.)

• If anyone feels inclined to write a really favorable review of "The God-Hungry Imagination" on Amazon, I'd be most grateful!

• My husband has requested that I finish a novel during this next year. It is a life goal of mine, so I might as well tackle it sooner rather than later, right? Pray for persistence and playful creativity (and maybe a publisher down the road).

But first, my husband and I are moving back to Michigan next weekend. Yes: finally and for good. He has been appointed to a church outside of Lansing, so we are packing up our earthly belongings and leaving Durham, North Carolina after four wonderful years. We will miss our church, Asbury Temple UMC, and the Duke Divinity community. But most of all we will miss our housemates at Isaiah House of Hospitality (to whom "The One Year Daily Grind" is dedicated).

There is a kind of tearing that happens when you've gone through daily spiritual formation with a group of people who are trying to follow God's call in the abandoned places of the world. I imagine this is what the Apostle Paul felt like as he said goodbye to the Ephesians, knowing they would never have that kind of close connection again. The church is like family; it is more than family. We are engrafted to these people through baptism and the breaking of bread. How does one say goodbye?