Ernestly Speaking

Books

September 2023

I have had a life of privilege–the written word has surrounded me all my life. Not everyone has such a spectacular blessing.

So many words in so many formats!

My mother’s “women’s” magazines. Sears Roebuck and Penny catalogs. Highlights Magazine (remember Goofus and Gallant?). Scholastic Books fliers taken home to order favorite chapter books. The Jamestown (NY) Post Journal and the NYT. Sunday School booklet (to be filled out Saturday night by all procrastinators). The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys. The biographies of great worthies I would check out of the school library and return the next day. The Bible. New textbooks at school (looking to see who had had them the year before). Mimeographed tests in school (smell the ink…). Pen pal letters. Bonhoeffer. Words of wisdom on fortune cookies. Cartoons of Bazooka Joe (and a mouthful of bubble gum). Snoopy. U2. Wordle. Film credits. IKEA instructions. German/Swedish/French/Welsh/Hebrew/English dictionaries.

The words are everywhere.

When my sibs and I emptied my mother’s house after her death, everybody had a box of childhood stuff to go through (because where else do adult children leave things they won’t need or remember for the next forty-plus years?). My box had handwritten stories from older elementary days that I had totally forgotten about.

Fr. Richard Rohr, in his wise book Falling Upward, talks about the interests we had during childhood coming back in new ways when we enter the last third of life. My jobs and profession have required me to write a lot: airline tickets (pre-computer), reports, letters, sermons, eulogies, minutes, plans, training material, classes, power-points, and more. Now in my “retirement,” I am returning to what I am reminded was my first love: the Story.

This newsletter is the first of (probably monthly) short and sweet updates on what I am writing and what I am reading–because all good writers must be good readers.

I am writing: a novel (more later), a series of poems (more later), and a collection of short stories on the theme of Christmas for the completion of my Doctor in Ministry in the Sacred Art of Writing.

What I am reading: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri, Foster by Claire Keegan, A Giacometti Portrait by James Lord, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Apeirogon: A Novel by Colum McCann, and Letters & Life: On Being a Writer, on Being a Christian by Brett Lott.

I’d love to hear what you are reading and writing!