The New Hampshire Writers’ Project is a great resource for New Hampshire writers. From the monthly Writers’ Nights Out to their Critique Partners Program, they keep finding ways to help me stay focused on my goal of growing up to be a real writer. With the introduction of New Hampshire Writers’ Week, their visibility and clout are poised to rise all the further. If you’re a New Hampshire writer and not yet a member, what are you waiting for? The $55 annual membership fee is cheap compared to the value.

In her dream she is always falling . . .

Two eagles awake to the sound of thunder, or rather a helicopter that hovers overhead. While mama eagle flees, papa stays to defend their eggs but is captured, leaving mama to raise three eaglets by herself.

Speaking of single moms, Mary is overwhelmed by Lissy’s teenage surliness, so when Mary’s father dislocates his hip, who better to help him for a few weeks than Lissy? To complicate matters, he’s just taken in a runaway boy and his wounded owl, but Mary decides nevertheless to entrust her daughter’s well-being to fate and her father’s vigilance.

And then there’s Shep, who’s just an old dog. He doesn’t do much, but beware lest he steal your heart.

This is not a whimsical story, but a poignant tale of the banality of evil, the impotence of good and the unexpected voice that suggests that what we do, for good or ill, might actually matter.

Coming to an online retailer near you in 2015.

A very personal attempt to solve the world’s problems.

Call me delusional, but I truly believe that my life (and even Love’s Anarchy itself) is a story that will someday make sense. I can’t begin to guess who you the readers may be, let alone in what genre my story is being told, but I’m eager to meet you, the author.

The central tenet of Love’s Anarchism is that the author of The Book of Life (hereinafter referred to as “you” and/or “God”) approaches me not from above but from below. In other words I, as a privileged, white, straight male who has everything all figured out, look in vain for a God who is more privileged, whiter, straighter, maler and more put-together. Rather, God comes to me as you.

Heh. No offense. I only mean to say that if any or all of those adjectives fail to describe you, if you come to me broken, ashamed, oppressed and desperate, then you are more likely to provide me with a glimpse into the character of my author than any of my peers or superiors. God, in order to suffer alongside of you, to identify with you fully, has become you, and you invite me (and all my peers and superiors) to do likewise.

So, while much of this book is addressed to you, it’s not actually written for you. Love’s Anarchy is intended for people such as myself who have wealth, security, privilege and power, and who can’t seem to free ourselves from the cage described by these four words.

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A Romp Through Narnia

I’m told there is a lion who wants to meet with me. I am told that he is fierce and unpredictable and very large. I have known about him for most of my life, and at times I’ve believed I caught a glimpse of his shadow, but I have yet to actually meet him face to face. His name is Aslan, and it’s possible that you’ve heard of him.

C. S. Lewis has created a wonderful place, a place where anything can happen. Even the stones can talk. In Aslan’s Call Mark Eddy Smith shows us how—in this fanciful world—we discover the truest reality. In the children who travel to Narnia we find ourselves. In Aslan we find Christ. And in the place of Narnia we find the very adventure for which God made us.

We begin with the journey, and it is the journey that shapes us.

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“I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.”

When Cindy Bunch, a friend and editor at InterVarsity Press, told me, in July 2001, that Colin Duriez’s agent had gotten him a better deal at a different publisher for his book on Tolkien, and that the author she had approached to replace him had claimed there wasn’t enough time to write one before the movie’s upcoming release in December, she asked if I would have any interest in trying my hand at writing such a book. Three months later, I handed her a finished manuscript containing thirty meditations on various virtues found in The Lord of the Rings.

The mere recollection of [this phrase] can move me to tears. I have been reading this tale since I was eleven years old, taking it from my shelf every year or so and returning to Middle-earth. . . . As I get older, and learn more of what sort of person I am, and continue sojourning to the rich soil of the Shire and the high tower of Minas Tirith, I discover that many of my notions of what is good and right and noble in this world have their source in that one.

In the journey from birth to death, you will be asked to leave behind everything you have known, and to bear what treasure you have to an uncertain end. When the road is invisible, impassable or crowded with foes, the tale of Frodo and his friends offers hope that you will be given the strength and the help you need to keep walking, as well as a reminder that you are not alone.

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