Excerpt from chapter 1
The team is still working on trying to get the book to market in paperback, eBook and audiobook. The hope is to get all activated by June 20th. This includes a dedicated website for the book itself.
As I promised last week, here is an excerpt from the first chapter / Introduction to my book - Faith Born Naked, How Grace Saved Me.
.............."This book captures the journey of my wife, Dona, and me. It is a journey over many decades—the earlier period as separate individuals and later as a united couple. Faith matters a great deal to us and is incorporated into our everyday lives. However, each of us subscribes to different religions. In the epic contest of faith-related ideas around us, we see ourselves as neither winners nor losers. We believe that faith of all forms can be valuable when one is blessed by grace.
Just as ‘faith' is viewed inclusively in this book, so is the concept of grace. To be clear, 'grace' is not yoked to theological sources, like Calvinist doctrines of grace. Instead, grace is an openness to the beauty in what belongs to all of us – our shared humanity. To draw everyone together, excluding none – as only God can – grace is essential. It broadens our horizons and brings more groups into the middle ground where fellowship and useful interaction can occur. On our part, all we have to do is simply receive that grace.
About a month into writing this book, my editor said that my first chapter, particularly, ought to connect sharply with the reader – angst portrayed, for example, must feel like the cut of a blade across an open palm. Those moments abound in my life. And I found it difficult to take my mind back to the times when events felt like death by a thousand cuts. Every ounce of pain would come back. Then, I recalled a TV episode of The Voice in which Kelly Clarkson said her initial success came from early songs of her troubled search for love and the struggles she had faced. To engage audiences, composers or authors need to bare themselves for the world to see.
My journey is about my faith, centered on God. It is also about the circumstances and people who have shaped my life over the years........."