So what IS this book? That's a great question. At first, I suppose it could be said that it is a collection of writings, a hodgepodge if you will created but not really belonging to a collection. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "hodgepodge" goes back to medieval times and referred to a stew made of items that did not belong together. None of those items were disgusting alone, but collectively, they just didn't work.

Were that to happen here, I would be most disappointed. I have come to think of my writing, my little children of the mind, as one. Many years ago, I began going to a spiritual director, an Episcopal brother trained in the field, spiritually challenging and intuitive about matters divine. I went out of a sense that I needed a person and place where I could bring my life to someone who could help me see what God was up to, one who could give good feedback and call attention to important traces of the divine.

I began to officially journal, though I had been doing so since college. Journaling is ultimately a dismal experience, for a good journal is meant to be burned just after death. This is so that the writer will be utterly honest and it is hard to be so forthright with an audience in one's mind. But it is dismal also because, as one looks back and rereads a journal, the writer is likely to also see that the same handful of limitations, blind spots and preoccupations that were present at the start of life are still there.