Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.~Psalm 84:5 (NIV)

This morning I'm mopping in increments. Dividing up the floor space to slide the mop into all the crevices where the dirt has mounded and hidden. In pieces I make progress, the wooden floor like little squares of Scrabble tiles. The task is almost as satisfying as making words when I play that venerated game. Perhaps this is how God works in my life, increment by increment, massaging His oil into my heart, working out the dry, cracked places, creating powerful words of "peace" and "beauty" and "strength" with His Kingdom Scrabble squares.  God, my loving Father, reminds me that my life is not about doubling down to try and figure things out, but rather receiving and absorbing His aromatic love and affection. His light.

I find it difficult to relax. I say so often, "God, it would seem more wholesome to strive, to struggle. That mode feels so much more acceptable, more respectable, more satisfying somehow, than releasing myself to the unconditional validation you have for me. It is difficult to take in that your grace is that broad, that you don't condemn, nor do you browbeat me into compliance."  Yet how can I think that of you?

Just one place is all I need. Somewhere to be at peace.~Michido Aoyama (From What You Are Looking For Is In The Library)

I didn't know what I was looking for until I opened the book. What I was looking for had evaded me for many years. But you find things when you need to. Or maybe when you're ready to.

Books somehow emerge for me when I'm at the library. I believe God sends me books. First, the title intrigued me, because if there's anywhere I feel happy, it's in a library. I love all the shelves of books--their redolent scent. The calm librarians with their smiles as fresh as green ferns. Other people. Tapping on computers. A toddler holding a book close to his chest. Me wandering through the aisles, the books just waiting to be opened. The page a constant friend all these years. 

In the book, What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, I meet Ryo Urase who lives in Tokyo and works for a furniture manufacturing company. He is good at his job, a trustworthy employee. He also has a dream that bloomed into his imagination when he was a teenager and bought a silver spoon in an antique store. He wondered about the spoon. Had it once graced the dining table at a mansion in England? Or had a mother once used the spoon to delicately feed her baby? Or had an elderly woman stirred her tea with the spoon, lost in the nostalgia of younger days? Ryo held on to the spoon for years as a way to remember his dream.

Ryo realizes an unexpected pathway when he meets a man who owns a bookstore where cats roam and tea and coffee are served. Ryo observes, "A cat wanders around my feet. A tabby, with a white stomach and paws. The cats all seem to be extremely relaxed and at home. I gaze around me at the books on display. It feels good to be sitting here drinking coffee and watching cats, surrounded by books. I feel content and relaxed. If I left now, my visit would still have been perfectly satisfactory."

Ryo talks to the owner of the bookstore, Mr. Yasuhara, who has written an article about the beauty of having parallel careers. Ryo asks, "Isn't it hard work to manage a shop and work for a company at the same time? Don't you ever find that either gets too much?" Mr. Yasuhara laughs lightly. "No, I don't. If anything, it's doing both that makes me feel like neither is ever too much of a burden.. Before I had the place, all I ever used to think about was quitting my office job, but now that job is what gives me the means to enjoy running the bookshop. If the bookshop was all I did, however, then I'd spend a lot more time thinking about sales strategies and so on. Which would be far more demanding. And I don't really want that."

Mr. Yasuhara asks Ryo why he wants to open an antique store and he answers, "I want to bring people together with the objects they are meant to meet. Objects that are meant to be passed on, forever, belonging to different people at different points in time. I want to be the intermediary for such encounters.. To provide a space where they might occur."

It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.~Psalm 44:3 (NIV)

The other day I imagined myself inside a fenced-in yard. Green and lush Texas St. Augustine grass covered the area. A wrought iron table and two chairs sat under a shady oak. I sat in one of the chairs and admired a pot of red geraniums sitting on the little table. I thought to myself, "I don't want to stay here all day. There is a lot more to see just outside the gate. And the gate is not locked. All I need to do is push it open and step across the threshold to explore the neighborhood." I rose from my chair to peer through the wooden slats of the fence and I saw slivers of orange and purple flowers in the neighbor's garden. When I looked through a knothole, I observed a cute black and white dog, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, panting. But I couldn't see his whole body. I could only see the outside world in part. Why didn't I simply go over to the gate and push it open?

We tend to scrape up all the lonely, echoing, unknowable parts of ourselves and drop them in drawers or hang them from little wooden shelves, injecting our feelings into objects that won't judge or abandon us, holding on to the past in this tangible way. But everyone else? Everyone else has their priorities straight.~Sloane Crosley (From Grief Is For People)

Do you ever feel you'd like someone to grab your hand, pull up two chairs and say, "Sit down. Tell me everything. I have time?" 

My husband is good at doing this. And he may not believe me that I see him in this way. He may more experience that I'm exasperated with all the tools he has--that I insist he put them away in a too tiny closet we have in our condo. That I scold him for all the phone wires looping over the lamps. I do this. Yes. But I also so love that he listens to me. One time, when I was formally working, a client of mine said to me at the end of the session, "Did you know that when you smile, your top teeth are crooked?" I remembered I immediately put my hand over my mouth and tried to stop smiling and muttered something like, "Oh, right. true. They are crooked." And when the client left, I pulled a compact mirror out of my purse, smiled wide and closely examined my teeth and thought, "She's right. My teeth are a lot more crooked than I realized." My feelings were hurt and I couldn't shake the fact that I couldn't shake off a rude comment. I stuffed my feelings in a drawer and thought how immature I was. Other people wouldn't let that comment bother them. Everyone else has their priorities straight. 

I'm a writer; I tell stories.~Claire Messud (From This Strange Eventful History)

A few days ago I received an email from a reader. She said she had finished one of my books and "loved" it. She told me that each evening after dinner, she read the book aloud to her cat, Sonny. She wrote that the book brought her comfort. She said she felt like someone understood her and she felt less lonely. Perhaps her words brought me as much comfort. I guess this is what every writer hopes for, prays for--that someone would feel comforted, less lonely, because of their words. And then the cat. Dear Sonny. A listener.

We all need comfort.