Word by Word

Things have been exceedingly busy here, culminating in William (almost two) being walked around in the back of a theater, shouting at his older sister singing up on stage, "Julia! Sit down!" But now the play is over, and things are slowing down a bit, and it occurs to me that maybe I should have mentioned at some point that I was in a real published book last month.

Some time ago, Sarah Reinhard asked me if I'd contribute a post to her blog series meditating on every word of the Hail Mary. My word was "our", as in "now and at the hour of our death", and I wrote it up in about ten minutes based on a brief insight I'd had while saying bedtime Hail Marys with the kids.

Recently Sarah assembled all the Hail Mary posts and edited them into a book: Word by Word: Slowing Down with the Hail Mary. The essay remains unchanged from its original form, but there it is now in a book, proof that a small spurt of effort to help out a friend can lead to your name in an Amazon preview window.

As part of a series of interviews with the contributors to the book, Sarah asked me a few questions about my essay, in which ten more minutes of effort led to another first: my very own graphic.

Tolle et lege, if you're minded to!