the word again: Vulnerable

I feel so bewilderingly vulnerable, so disoriented.

From Lanier Ivester about her dad's death here. 
I heard her last year at Hutchmoot. I wanted to think like her and live like her. 
Ever met someone like that who lives counter-cultural yet is making culture. 
She is a writer. 
She loves books. 
She has style.
She loves beauty and defines it. 

She writes:

 I’ve feared for my faith the past three years. I’ve rebelled against and then dully accepted the silence of God. I’ve gotten used to it, in a way.
...
That His mercies are retroactively redemptive.

( key word: retroactive. Have you ever thought of those mercies new every morning doing retroactive work? This is enlarging my heart. )

I just finished a book by Walter Wangerin who was the keynote speaker at Hutchmoot 
a few weeks ago. I love his stories. He is a pastor and knew his flock and loved them 
dearly. I knew God would have some nuggets in this book about grief.  The little deaths we deal with everyday. It starts out with the adoption of his daughter. It ends with Gloria's , a dear congregant, who loses a loved one. It is about hope in restored relationships and how Wangerin uses stories to help heal. 

“Death doesn’t wait till the ends of our lives to meet us and to make an end,” says Walter Wangerin. “Instead, we die a hundred times before we die; and all the little endings on the way are like a slowly growing echo of the final BANG!”