Bla-Bla-Blog

I am so desperate to write something beautiful and moving, something pithy and uproarious, but today I feel like my brain is full of sawdust, and the words in my head sound like the parents on the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

So instead I would point you places where interesting things are already being said. Here are some books that give art and soul a swift kick in the shorts, and you might like them this holiday season:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Miles to Cross by Mike Howerton (shameless, I know!)
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Why Guys Need God by Mike Erre

Take them all with a grain of salt, learn, apply, discard, soar.

Here’s a Lamott quote that for some reason got me today:

What did it mean to be saved, I asked, although I knew the word smacked of Elmer Gantry for both of us.
“You don’t need to think about this,” he said.
“Just tell me.”
“I guess it’s like discovering you’re on the shelf of a pawnshop, dusty and forgotten and maybe not worth very much. But Jesus comes in and tells the pawnbroker, ‘I’ll take her place on the shelf. Let her go outside again.”