2024

2024 (24)

My hope is to offer encouragement to writers as well as to those who simply love to read. You will find snippets of things I am working on and special announcements here.

Monday, 29 July 2024 15:37

The Way The Light Falls

Written by Priscilla K. Garatti

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.~W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

Over the weekend, I read a disturbingly beautiful book. Can the words disturbing and beautiful harmonize ? The book, Where The Light Fell, by Philip Yancey, seems to fit this uncanny description. Yancy writes of his boyhood in Georgia during the fifties. He had an older brother, and the boys were raised by a single Christian fundalmentalist mother who offered them both a steady diet of religious rules and shame. Yancey defines his upbringing as "ungraced." While in college he had what he defines as "the first authentic religious experience of my life." 

He says of his "vison" of the parable of the Good Samaritan: "A swarthy Middle Eastern man, dressed in robes and turban, bending over a dirty, blood-stained form in a ditch. Without warning, those two figures now morph on the internal screen of my mind. The Samaritan takes on the face of Jesus. The Jew, pitiable victim of a highway robbery, also takes on another face--one I recognize with a start as my own. In slow motion, I watch Jesus reach down with a moistened rag to clean my wounds and stanch the flow of blood. As he bends toward me, I see myself, the wounded victim of a crime, open my eyes and spit on him, full in the face. Just that. The image unnerves me--the apostate who doesn't believe in visions or in biblical parables. I am rendered speechless...all that evening i brood over what took place. It wasn't exactly a vision--more like a vivid daydream or an epiphany. Regardless, I can't put the scene out of mind...In my arrogance and mocking condescension, maybe I'm the neediest one of all."

Saturday, 20 July 2024 14:03

Fathers And Daughters

Written by Priscilla K. Garatti

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food. ~Job 36:16 (NIV)

I happily read a book filled with beautiful metaphors, the prose rich, resonant, and providing me with pleasure. Then, abruptly, the author stated, "though I'm not spiritual..." I felt sadness that the writer was solely connected to the natural, not realizing the Creator's gift bestowed on him to write so eloquently, causing the English language to sing. 

Yet I am no different than this author at times. It is as if I am not spiritual. I become tangled inside anxiety, enamored with my own ideas, my faith in God expressed in sloppy elisions. I am consumed with self-effort, forgetting the expansive love of the Father. Burned out and panting with fatigue. I typically experience the rescue of His relentless mercy while watching a sunrise. It happened just this way a few mornings ago.

Tuesday, 02 July 2024 17:36

Letter To My Former Self

Written by Priscilla K. Garatti

You yourselves have seen what I did in Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.~Exodus 19:4 (NIV)

Over this past year, I've had the privilege of connecting online with a fellow author and publisher, Ericka Clay. She created an ebook entitled Letters To Our Former Selves. She graciously accepted an essay from me to include in her publication.  You can find the ebook and all her books, poems and essays here. Ericka Clay

My essay:

LETTER TO MY FORMER SELF

Dear Former Self,

There was so much pain thrust upon you. Primarily because you were born into a world that is familiar with turmoil and despair, shame and sorrow.

You survived. I commend your resilience, especially since your mother frequently scolded that you were "too thin skinned and needed to toughen up." You lived with a red-welted glyph across your tender heart.

You didn't know then what you've learned by now. You didn't know that profligate grace would be the conduit to overthrowing guilt and sin. Would stand nonplussed in welcoming your sensitive nature.

You had to experience the prodigal years, too, to learn that all your efforts to fix and perform would only deplete your faith in God, would only drive you further away. Would create a gleam in the enemy's eye, make him clap his hands in glee that you fashioned a beaten-down dusty pathway to the canyon of legalism.

Monday, 27 May 2024 19:14

Looking Back

Written by Priscilla K. Garatti

The wideness of God's mercy, as the old hymn says (morning by morning new mercies I see); the sudden way that grace makes all things good.~Kathleen Norris (From Dakota, A Spiritual Geography)

Today I write my 400th blog entry. In some ways, this truth seems momentous. In another way, it is simply a milestone. I've needed to be here. Fleeing to the page, picking up the pen (my sister's term) feels as if it's saved my life over and over again. I started writing for real in 2002 when I'd almost forsworn Christianity--at least I thought I had. At first, I ventured to the white, empty space hesitantly. But soon, the blank lines began to fill with black ink as I poured out my feelings and questions about life with the remaining threadbare strands of faith in God I had left. Writing became a companion in that austere region, like a sturdy cane for an aching limp. I had no idea the profligate grace I needed then. I probably still don't. God has used the page as a catalyst to help me connect with Him, to understand that it is only by His mercy and faithfulness that I continue on the pilgrim road this side of His Kingdom. And I find it heartening that at consistent intervals you join me here in this spiritual geography. Thank you.

Saturday, 11 May 2024 14:41

Buongiorno

Written by Priscilla K. Garatti

Let us remember that the life in which we ought to be interested is "daily" life. We can, each of us, only call the present time our own...Our Lord tells us to pray for today, and so He prevents us from tormenting ourselves about tomorrow. It is as if God were to say to us: "It is I who gives you this day and will also give you what you need for this day. It is I who makes the sun to rise. It is I who scatters the darkness of night and reveals to you the rays of the sun."~Gregory of Nyssa, On The Lord's Prayer (From The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy And "Women's Work" by Kathleen Norris)

The black and white cup goes in the microwave. Hazelnut this morning, the strong brew that opens my nostrils. Inhaling the day. What will it look like?  I could call up negativity and fear, dread or apathy. Glower at the hours ahead. I don't want to. Can't afford those feelings, don't want to luxuriate in shame and staleness.

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What Readers Are Saying

In Missing God Priscilla takes a brave and unflinching look at grief and the myriad ways in which it isolates one person from another. The characters are full-bodied and the writing is mesmerizing. Best of all, there is ample room for hope to break through. This is a must read.

Beth Webb-Hart (author of Grace At Lowtide)

winner"On A Clear Blue Day" won an "Enduring Light" Bronze medal in the 2017 Illumination Book Awards.

winnerAn excerpt from Missing God won as an Honorable Mention Finalist in Glimmertrain’s short story “Family Matters” contest in April 2010.