This year, just like the past two years, my New Year's Resolution is to submit a manuscript to an agent. But this year, I think I'm actually ready. Last year my bubble burst when a kind reader pointed out that the manuscript really wasn't ready. I've gone back and forth on which manuscript I'll be submitting and I've finally decided that I'm submitting the memoir. It's my story to tell but honestly, it's some of my best writing. I was reading over the manuscript and I'd forgotten all about that last round of rewrites. It was so much better than I remembered. There were huge sections that I didn't remember writing or reading before.
My heart sank again [when I heard which church I would be serving]. In a worship class in seminary I joked that, “It’s not church if there’s not an organ.” I had always had high church “smells and bells” tendencies that only grew stronger in seminary attending chapel at Candler. The song my heartstrings are tuned to sounds like “Be Thou My Vision." There’s an organ and sometimes a piano playing along with it. There’s weekly communion and stained glass windows. And liturgy, ancient words. It was fine to wear shorts and flip flops but in the song my heartstrings are tuned the clergy wear vestments.
I already knew that my soul wouldn’t be fed there. There are many ways to worship God. This is just the particular song that my heartstrings are tuned to. I can find God in other songs but this is the song I lean on. This is the song of my childhood, this is the song I grew up with, the one I can sing in my sleep, the one I can sing when there are no other words.
In many ways I'm afraid that a spiritual memoir will be harder to publish than a novel. But a great spiritual memoir is better than a bad novel, right?
.JPG)
It's really happening.
