This new season

Today I will write the final pages of my Historical Theology exam. We had two days to answer the question of the role philosophy has played in the formation, defense, and dissemination of the Christian faith over the past 2000 years. Great question. I’ve got 20 pages so far and it’s not due til 3:00. Funny thing is, I wouldn’t have been able to write a paragraph let alone a page on a topic like this four months ago. Education is real. And it is most definitely good.

Tomorrow, I will put together a quick ppt presentation to support my term paper for my final class in Paul’s letter to the Romans. I wrote the whole thing as an attempt to understand how he comes to claim that sin leads to death. I mean, really: this is not a line that resonates with modern ears. But I believe the truths of Scripture to be timeless. And so it must be my ears that need adjusting. I’m sort of amazed at what I discovered as I wrote it:  in a nutshell, almost every civilization since the dawn of time—pagan, Hebrew, Christian, Muslim—believed that all the good things of this world—food, shelter, rain, love, life—come from God/gods. Even the great thinkers of Greek philosophy understood that sin was real, and that it represented a state of alienation from the Ultimate source of Wisdom, a state of alienated being that leads in only one direction. Something to think about.

The other cool thing is what’s been happening with The Pitcher’s Mom. I love this book. Loved it when I wrote it 7 years ago, when Graham was still a ballplayer. But publishers wouldn’t take a chance on it. Said women won’t read a book about sports. I said “maybe that’s because you don’t publish any books about sports from the woman’s perspective.” Deaf ears. With the advent of e-books, this all changed. No longer did I have to wait for a publisher to pay me an advance (as they had with Baptism by Fire) and put the book out for me. I could do it myself. Which I did six weeks ago. Taught myself everything I needed to know in between readings about Constantine and Corinth. I guess you could say God gave me a nudge: hey, baseball season’s coming up, why don’t you get that book out and offer it on Kindle. Let’s see what happens.C’mon, it’ll be good.

And things are really starting to happen. Over the weekend I ran a two-day free promotion on amazon and 15,000 people downloaded the book. Some of them must be reading it and liking it because each morning I see that more and more people are starting to buy it, borrow it, and tell their friends about it. This is what gives me the greatest joy! When you work alone all day, year after year, you can get a little hungry for feedback. Here are two of the lovely reviews on amazon that came in since the weekend:

“I enjoyed every chapter of this book- having raised a son who lived & breathed baseball for much of his life, the characters really resonated with me. The story flows so well, & brought back wonderful memories. Highly recommend, and look forward to more from this talented writer.”

“A friend of mine recommended this book, and I downloaded it yesterday while watching my daughter play in a Softball Tournament. It was SUCH an appropriate book for the occasion! Not too deep — and definitely a story I can relate to. As the very un-athletic Mom to two athletes, one of whom is a pitcher, this book mirrored my life in so many ways. Just like Jill, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. No handbook exists for managing your child’s softball “career” when you’re scared to catch her fastball. From ill-chosen parking spaces to driving a mobile locker room to the way a sport can completely take over your life, this book resonated with me. I felt like a friend was telling me her story. The perfect summer read. Have already recommended it to several more friends!”

May this be a month that showers each one of us with blessings. And may we be wise and humble and grateful enough to acknowledge the source.

Heather

 

 

 

 

Hot off the presses

The paperback of “The Pitcher’s Mom” is now available exclusively on Amazon. Enjoy!

Lessons from the Garden

Every once in a great while I come across something so simple and brilliant and true I wish I’d written it myself. I didn’t, but I can do the next best thing, which is to share it with you. This very short story was written by Anne Herbert, who I’ve come to discover is the woman credited with coining the phrase “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Enjoy….

In the beginning, God didn’t make just two people: he made a bunch of us. Because he wanted us to have a lot of fun, and you can’t really have fun unless there’s a whole gang of you. He put us in Eden which was a combination garden and playground and park and told us to have fun.

At first we did have fun just like he expected. We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, climbed on the trees, swung on the vines, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest, and acted silly. We laughed a lot.

Then one day this snake told us that we weren’t having real fun because we weren’t keeping score. Back then, we didn’t know what score was. When he explained it, we still couldn’t see the fun. But he said we should give an apple to the person who was best at all the games and we’d never know who was best without keeping score. We could all see the fun of that, of course, because were were all sure we were the best.

It was different after that. We yelled a lot. We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games. Others, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score.

By the time God found out what had happened we were spending about 45 minutes a day actually playing and the rest of the time working out scoring. God was wroth about that——very, very wroth. He said we couldn’t use his garden anymore because we weren’t having fun. We told him we were having lots of fun. He was just being narrow minded because it wasn’t exactly the kind of fun he originally thought of.

He wouldn’t listen.

He kicked us out, and he said we couldn’t come back until we stopped keeping score. To rub it in (to get our attention, he said), he told us we were all going to die and our scores wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

He was wrong. My cumulative, all-game score now is 16,548 and that means a lot to me. If I can raise it to 20,000 before I die, I’ll know I’ve accomplished something. Even if I can’t my life has a great deal of meaning because I’ve taught my children to score high and they’ll be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000.

Really, it was life in the garden that didn’t mean anything. Fun is great in its place but without scoring there’s no reason for it. God actually has a very superficial view of life and I’m certainly glad my children are being raised away from his influence. We were lucky. We’re all very grateful to the snake.

(excerpted from “The Opposite of Sin is Love” by Carl Skrade)

 

Blogging wide

Dear friends,

I was given a wonderful opportunity to share my own baseball story to promote “The Pitcher’s Mom.” If you like it, please push like at the bottom of the article on the HuffPo page and repost to friends. That’s the best way to keep it featured. Thanks,

Heather

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-choate-davis/mothers-sons-and-big-base_b_1420720.html

Just keep walking

A fellow blogger posted a wonderful quote from C.S. Lewis today. May it be our reminder daily.

“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted—i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone. You are in the right way. Walk—don’t keep on looking at it.”

— C. S. Lewis