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Dear Reader,
Today's guest columnist, USA Today's Best-Selling Author and Pulitzer Prize nominee, Thomas Sullivan (Sully), describes himself this way:
"I've been gambler, a 'Rube Goldberg' innovator, a coach, teacher, city commissioner, and an All-American athlete. Having lived in a dozen countries by the time I was six, I feel at home in many cultures, and across the literary spectrum from mainstream to genre."
Thomas Sullivan's latest novel, Case White in e-book format, was just released and would make a wonderful holiday gift.
Be sure to send "Sully" a welcome to the book club email and wish him a Happy Birthday (He's celebrating another year!). You can reach Sully at: mn333mn@earthlink.net And his inspirational monthly newsletter (Sullygram) is available for free on request, too.
"Happy Birthday Sully! Welcome to the book club today..."
Trees are such elegant dressers here in Minnesota, but this time of year they UNdress with a honky-tonk flare that would make a stripper blush. If you shuffle through the rainbow rustle of leaves in a half-naked woods, the shedding trees will tap your shoulders flirtatiously with golden epaulets or consort with the wind to wrap a tawdry boa around your neck. Why are they so confident? In another month they will stand in abject drabness, creaking with winter's chill amid snowflakes that swirl like the ashes of summer.
It must be because of their faith that spring will come again. They wait patiently, as if they know that ice is just paralyzed water that will flow once more and snowflakes are only time-release raindrops that the earth will drink at winter's end. The seasons are a renewable promise, never broken. Trusting in this resurrection is SO necessary to survival. And it's the same with the seasons of life. Whatever strips away our triumphs and vanities, whatever our hurts, disappointments and regrets, there can always be another spring, another revaluing of what we are!
I believe in second chance dances but not in second rate fates. If life were wall-to-wall perfection, unrelenting and predictable, why bother to take the journey? No, the road is more exciting than that, more meaningful, more filled with newness, fresh hope, freedom, choice and redemption. Pssst!--I'll tell you a secret. Finding that newness is why I read Suzanne's columns--and why I write novels. Because both of those acts are adventures in creativity. Both offer understanding of the human condition and another chance to "get it right."
Doesn't matter how bad things are. You are somewhere at any given moment. You exist. And "somewhere" is always a starting point to move in a better direction. I remember standing in the mist of Jackson Square in New Orleans one chill Sunday morning and listening to a black street preacher pour out fiery inspiration on the defeated souls huddling there. One teary man in particular just kept shaking his head and murmuring that it was too late for him. The preacher, his voice dropping but somehow taking on energy, kept counterpointing with a simple "It's all right...it's all right" as he touched him on the shoulder. I saw the transformation, saw the energy and the hope take wing in those tormented eyes by the fountain.
Whatever the debris in your life--alienations, health, faltering relationships, career--allow me to pass that along: "It's all right." Do not permit disappointment, disillusionment, or loss of trust in the world to take away faith in yourself. You are new again in every meaningful way in which you've grown! If you hunker down in despair, you miss the whole point of living.
I don't know what happened to the broken man in Jackson Square, but I know he rose up in that moment of compassion a renewed human being, filled with resolve. Life isn't a single pinnacle of triumph, it is crests and troughs. Highs have no meaning without lows. So let go of your leaves whenever autumns come in your life. Dispense them in a blaze of having lived in good faith for whatever goals you grew them for, and do not lose your faith in another season. Now, that's something to celebrate. Happy Thanksgiving!
--Thomas Sullivan
You can reach Sully and find out more about Case White at:
mn333mn@earthlink.net
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
* This month's Penguin Classics book is CHILDHOOD, by Jona Oberski. Start reading now and don't forget to enter the drawing for your chance to win a Penguin Totebag: http://www.supportlibrary.com/bc/v.cfm?L=drclassqqxqZ1AFE3FA7EF5&c=CLASSICS
AUTHORBUZZ: AuthorBuzz authors are on vacation for the next two weeks. Instead of writing, they'll be roasting turkeys and baking pies. They will return the week of December 1st.
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