Tag: compassion

Day 34 Lenten Meditation: Reach

The word “reach” implies two things: 1) that there is something we desire just beyond our grasp, and 2) that we will exert effort to get it.

We as humans are programmed to want what we don’t have. Without desire, our race would have died a long time ago. So we reach — with our hands to grasp, with our effort to accomplish, with our curiosity to discover, with our frustration to understand, with our loneliness to love.

I would argue that our need to reach out is a sacred thing, but only when balanced with compassion. It is possible to desire too much, to reach with a greedy fist, to wrest with that hand what others need to survive. It is entirely too possible to keep grasping and keep wanting, with no desire to visit the things already obtained. 

So we as humans stand at a ledge, grasping. If we reach out too far, if we reach out too often, we will fall into the chasm. We will cease to be with others, surrounded only by what we have obtained. The thing that will keep us from falling down the chasm is to balance “I want” with “I care”. 

The World Needs

The motto of NaNoWriMo is, as I have shared before, “The world needs your novel”.

I have doubted that, since the world hasn’t yet published my novel. There’s so many novels out there, however, that the world can’t see my novel.  Too many people write, too many people get rejected because they’re not guaranteed in the current fashion — I may not be good at writing, but being rejected by the current agent process won’t tell me if I’m good.

I have an acquaintance who’s my role model — when a project doesn’t catch fire, he tries something else. He doesn’t have to deal with the huge time commitment of novel-writing, so it’s not quite the same. But I watch him keep trying and learning, and the story it makes is totally fascinating.

I am working to model his persistence. Nobody’s representing me? I seek out small press and publish my least sellable works on Wattpad. These aren’t likely to make me the “It” person at writers’ conventions, but I find hierarchies of fame tiring.

The world needs my perseverance.
The world needs my compassion.
The world needs my struggle.
The world needs my love.
The world needs my optimisn.


If you want to help — WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A BETA READER?
This means you take on a manuscript and read it, making notes on parts you liked or didn’t like about it, places that you felt needed more description, more action, etc. I would like us to work through Mythos, which has been rejected once but is the first of a series I’d like to publish.

If you want to be a Beta reader (I need at least 3) please email me (soon!) at:

My email address