The Other Side of the Bonfire

That’s the title of my new book. It’s a novel, set in modern times, and although it wouldn’t be inappropriate for teens necessarily, it is primarily for and about adults.

So far, this publishing experience is doing its best to emulate the rosy dreams I had when I was in grad school, walking around next to formal gardens and old shade trees in Williamsburg, Virginia. In short, it bears no resemblance to real life. I love it!

The next fun event on this program is the photo shoot for the book cover, which is scheduled for later this week. I’m using the photographer who did the cover for Letters to Saint Lydia, which means that I’m already happy with whatever magic she’s going to work.  Her name is Stephanie Platis, and you can see some of her incredible portfolio here.

But at the moment, I’m going to try sleeping before midnight, for a change.

Special Guest: Eleni reviews “Letters to Saint Lydia”

Eleni and her sister

Do you ever feel overwhelmed, misunderstood, and confused about life? Do you get in fights with your parents and feel stressed out and frustrated about everything? Do you wish you had someone to talk to who understands and doesn’t judge you? Well, this is the kind of thing Lydia is going through the summer before she turns eighteen and becomes an adult. Lydia’s family converts to Orthodox Christianity without her, one of her best friends gets pregnant, and her comfortingly familiar life is falling apart as she gets ready to leave home for college. Lydia desperately needs a friend—and she finds one in the most surprising place: an icon of St. Lydia. Lydia tells the saint everything she is going through in her letters to St. Lydia, who invisibly answers, guiding her through the difficult times in her life with deep love and compassion.

Letters to Saint Lydia, by Melinda Johnson, is a book I connected to a lot (literally) because there is a girl in the story named Eleni who actually reminds me of myself. I was able to connect to Eleni’s personality and also to some of the Greek culture Eleni brings into the story because I am one quarter Greek and a lot of the things in this book had to do with some cultural things that are very similar to my family. When Lydia finally leaves home for college, she meets her new roommate, who happens to be Greek Orthodox, the Greek form of the religion her parents have just converted to. Her new roommate, Eleni, quickly becomes Lydia’s closest friend (besides St. Lydia) and helps guide and support Lydia through the challenges she deals with in college as well as in her spiritual struggles. For example, when Lydia gets a boyfriend who she thinks she’s in love with, Eleni tries to help Lydia to see what he’s really like and after the boyfriend attacks and leaves Lydia, Eleni is nothing but understanding and supportive and gets Lydia back to her normal self.

My evaluation of Lydia is that she is courageous and intelligent because even when she is questioning everything she thought she knew and she is confused about so many things, she keeps her head on her shoulders and never gives up or stops trying to find the whole truth. When she begins writing letters to Saint Lydia, she is skeptical and doesn’t even know whether or not she believes the saint exists, but still is comforted to pour her troubles out on the paper. She tells St. Lydia that she won’t pray to God or anything until she completely believes in Him, which I think is smart of her because I don’t think it’s a good idea to worship anything or anyone until you know for sure that it is the right thing to do. Later Lydia realizes that Saint Lydia really is reading her letters and has been giving her good advice and encouragement all along; Lydia is finally able to appreciate how much they really helped her through, even though she didn’t even know they were there at the time. I also thought Lydia was a good friend, because even when her friend Trella gets pregnant and isn’t able to go to college, Lydia still keeps in touch with her, comes to visit her all the way from college, and supports her through the extremely tough time of her pregnancy.

After I read the beginning of this book, I predicted that Lydia would meet some good new friends at college. It said how anxious she was to leave and I thought that she would probably end up meeting new friends who she would become closer to. I also predicted that she would meet someone else who was Orthodox who would inspire her. Both of my predictions were true because Lydia met Eleni, who was Orthodox and became a close friend of Lydia’s.

I really didn’t have a whole lot of questions while reading Letters to Saint Lydia, because the story was pretty clear and straightforward. As I read the first few pages, though, I did wonder if Saint Lydia would really answer Lydia’s letters and if Lydia would actually be able to read the saint’s letters. After reading a little further, I clarified that Saint Lydia was answering Lydia’s letters, but Lydia didn’t realize it until after she fully believed in Saint Lydia’s existence. I also was curious to know if Lydia and her mom would ever get along well, because their personalities seemed to clash
and they fought a lot before Lydia left for college. Later in the story, they started to connect more strongly and get closer. They ended up getting along much better when Lydia had her freedom and was out of the house, because Lydia’s mom didn’t have to tell her what to do all the time and Lydia didn’t feel so belittled and bossed around by her mother.

My final evaluation of this book is that it is a story many teenagers can connect to, even if they are not Orthodox or even Christian, because it is written in an understandable and interesting way. Even if people are going through different things than Lydia in their lives, some of the problems she has as she’s going to college and officially becoming an adult may be very similar to other teen’s struggles.

Letters to Saint Lydia is 207 pages long and there are many other characters besides Lydia, Saint Lydia, Eleni, and Trella. Some of them are Paul, Maria Louisa, Lauren, Jill, “Pogo”, and Jude. For example, towards the beginning of the story, Lydia’s best friends are Maria Louisa, Lauren, Jill, and Trella, who are on the high school volleyball team with her. Lydia refers to all of them as her
“volleyball family” and is very close to them up until college. However, later on in the book, as all their lives are changing and they don’t spend as much time together as before, Lydia begins to grow closer to Trella and Maria Louisa, but grows more distant with her friends Lauren and Jill. I think that this goes with the theme of the story, which is about a girl who is growing up and finding out who she is and what she believes in. In Letters to Saint Lydia, Lydia finds out who her true friends are and what is really important in life.

Saint Lydia’s Book Club

Over Lydia's shoulder

My husband is home. Home from a year at sea and on many foreign shores. His homecomings always mark a shift for me, a time when everything becomes new again in my life and everything is open for examination and rediscovery. In the general shakeup, I have discovered what I want to be doing with my literary life. I love books. I love writing books, reading books, talking about books, and I love the ways that life, real life, can intersect with my writing and reading life. In all aspects of my life, I am an Orthodox Christian woman, and I look through this lens as I read and write. I would love to start a conversation with other women who are reading through their own version of this lens, women who see both art and life through the eyes of faith.

Looking back, I can see ways in which my first novel, Letters to Saint Lydia, was the door into this conversation and its attendant adventures. I sometimes say, only half humorously, that the book was Saint Lydia’s idea. I certainly felt her looking over my shoulder, making a space inside me where I could hear and think about what I needed to write. I loved having her there. I hope she will drop in on me again as I keep walking along the path she pointed out to me.

So from now on, I’m shifting the focus of this blog to book talk for Orthodox Christian women of all ages. I’m interested in books by, for, and about Orthodox women, but also in any book that can touch or speak to us as who we are.

My Sense of Time Passing

Me, as a baby

That tiny little soul peering at you from the picture above is me. The same me as the adult woman sitting here, up too late as usual, typing out her thoughts. In one hour, the year will end in my time zone, and another year will begin. Many things happened to me in 2010, some in my outer world, many in my inner world, but perhaps the largest change in myself that I see is the strong development of my sense of time as PASSING.

I have watched time pass in other people’s lives for years, perhaps for as long as I have had a mature consciousness of what I was observing. But I realize now that at the core of my being, I always felt myself to be exempt. I was just looking on. Time wasn’t passing for me. My own time was as stretchy and boundless as my imagination, as easily held over, fluid almost to the point of nonexistence. I had a strong sense of daily time, the kind that tells me when I am late for a dentist appointment. But the time of my life, my life as a finite period on a finite planet, could not attach itself to me.

But it has now. This year, I crossed a tangible threshold of awareness. I am alive. I have been alive for a period of time, and I will remain alive for another period of time. With plenty of salads and some good luck, it may well be a nice long period of time. But it remains a period, a thing with a beginning in the present, and an end.

What else do I want to accomplish, while it lasts? How can I fill this time that I’ve been given to the brim? How can I make the most of it?

When I was a teen, staring out at life as something about to begin, I had three goals. I wanted to marry my true love, I wanted to be a mother, and I wanted to write a book. I’ve done it. As of this year, I have accomplished all three. But as of this year, I have fully discovered that all three are goals that are never fully met. They are always receding toward the horizon ahead of me.

I have been married for more than 10 years, but where my teen self would have awarded me a “check mark” for that goal, my present self knows from experience that a real marriage is remade every day, or ceases to exist. Mothering is the same. Perhaps all love is like this. Sometimes it feels like one long prayer to do better, interspersed with moments of such deep contentment that I can only thank God they happened to me. And what about writing a book? That wasn’t an endpoint either. It was a door, and once I came through it, I discovered the long corridor on the other side, and the ongoing urge to keep writing.

So this is the answer to my new awareness that time is passing. I can’t slow it down, and I can’t fill it up by snatching hopefully at everything that glitters. I can make the most of it by reaching each day for the three goal posts of my life, over and over again, striving each time for a little more perfection, knowing that the greatest perfection rests not in my efforts but in the thing itself, in what is loved.

A Moment with Ethel

Alexandra and Ethel reading, Fr. Tom providing electronic support.

Here is Ethel Anthe Barbas, on the right, offering her voice as Saint Lydia at the Letters to Saint Lydia reading and signing event on Sunday, December 5, at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Shoreline, WA.

This picture does not do her justice.

In real life, Ethel has a bright, attentive face and a decided flair for clothes. She volunteers for almost everything at church, and she always shows up. At her home, she has a garden.

I asked Ethel to read as Saint Lydia because I felt she could carry it off. She has a good speaking voice and she has presence. I was pretty sure she would be believable.

She was!

Her voice sounded so much the way I imagined Saint Lydia would sound, and she read with great sincerity. It was amazing to hear a living voice speaking the words of “Saint Lydia’s” letters.

But Ethel also gave me the most perfect moment of a memorable day. I’m not sure exactly when this happened. It was near the beginning, when I was racing around making sure everyone was ready. I tracked Ethel down at a table where she was talking to a friend, and she reached into her bag and said, “Here, this is from my garden.”

Lavender from Saint Lydia

It was a sachet, made of fresh lavender in a white cotton bag that looks hand-made. It’s tied with a tiny white satin ribbon, and there are leaves and flowers embroidered on it in white thread. It was so unexpected. I have a remarkably vivid memory of her smiling face, her bright dark eyes, her hand reaching toward me, and the fragrance of lavender. For just that moment, I stood completely still and breathed that sweet, sharp scent.

If you read the book, you will understand why, with the sachet in my hands, I thought, for a split second, that I could see Saint Lydia, standing in front of me.

Paddle to the Sea

Paddle to the Sea, by Holling Clancy Holling (Houghton Mifflin, 1941), is the story of a little wooden carving of a man in a canoe. He begins on a snow bank in the far north and floats down the melting snow and follows the water system, through various adventures, all the way to the sea. My mom read me this book when I was little, and the story, like its main character, has paddled along with me to this moment, when it feels like a little fable of my present life.

Letters to Saint Lydia has been published. Released. Shipped out. It exists now. I created it, but it now has a life of its own, like the little man in his canoe slipping away down the snowy mountain into the world beyond. People I know and people I don’t know are reading it, in places where I have been and in places where I may never be. Some of them get in touch with me, and sometimes, I make a connection with someone that leads to something else, a conversation, a little burst of friendship, a writing assignment. I suppose this is networking, but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like the water flowing along, bringing my little boat to whatever awaits it, and me, one adventure at a time.

Always learning…

Lydia writing to St. Lydia

I have a master’s degree. That means I stayed in school even longer than I had to because it really was THAT fun to be an English major. And while I adored all those hours spent wallowing in poetry and critiquing critiquers, I find that no amount of graduate education saves you from the learning curve. Life goes on moving, around you, beside you, through you, and there is always something more you need to know. Such as, for example, that your car won’t turn on if you don’t leave it in “park,” or that not all underdogs are worth rooting for, or that you can insert a picture into a blog post. See, up there? Right in the post. Learning how to do this small thing made me happy because although I love words, I still secretly believe that pictures are more powerful. Sometimes.

Letters to Saint Lydia is in the catalog!

I just had the thrilling and satisfying experience of seeing my first novel, Letters to Saint Lydia, appear in Conciliar Press’s 2010 Catalog, newly released on their website at http://www.conciliarpress.com/media/assets/2010_CP_Catalog.pdf on page 9.

There is it, a gorgeous cover (thank you again, Stephanie and Alexandra!), a great plot summary, even an ISBN! From the start, this book-writing experience has had a fairy-tale quality about it. The story just came to me, the first publisher to read it accepted it, and all along my journey, people have appeared on my path at just the moment when I needed their special gifts. I love this fairy-tale feeling, and I am truly grateful for these gifts…but just the same, it is wonderful to see the book begin its journey out of my fairy tale and into the real-live world where it will find its real-live readers.

Glory to God for all things!!!