January 30, 2009The Goodness of SlownessNow, don't get me wrong. I actually like living in a place that has four distinct seasons. But about this time of year (or, in the case of this particular year, about a month ago), I'm ready for spring. You can only scrape ice off your car in the dark in below-zero temperatures a certain number of times before you start to feel like you're going to throw up. (You don't throw up, of course, because whatever you ate is now frozen inside your stomach, but the gag reflex kicks in.) So I'm thinking of taking a little trip to PA this weekend, to have a little chat with Phil. Nothing overly serious, of course. Just some encouragement and cheerleading (Phil! Phil! He's our groundhog! If he can't do it--we might have to hurt him), maybe a little sweet talk to make sure he understands the urgency of not seeing his shadow--or, if he thinks he will see his shadow, the importance of not coming out at all. (If groundhog no come out, groundhog no see shadow.) I'm realizing that that's my approach to many situations. I admit it: I'm a control freak. And I love tangible progress. I mean, I really love it. I crave it. I start to suffocate without--okay, you get the point. So when things don't seem to be moving along as quickly as I'd like--or, say, when winter is dragging on and on and on and on--I get tempted to "help," just to speed things up a little. And then a few weeks ago I read these words from 1 Peter: "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (3:8-9). To be honest, the verses make me a little testy. I'd like to ask Peter how else I'm supposed to understand slowness, other than what I know. Slowness is slowness, as in, it's not fast. I don't know any other way to understand it!! And thanks for the reminder that, for all I know, in God's timeless mind frame, we in the Midwest haven't even had a whole day of winter yet! I feel the gag reflex kicking in. I know Peter is talking about Christ's return and the salvation of humans in verses 8 and 9, but the principles about God are true of other circumstances: his view of time is very different from ours, and he is more than willing to take his sweet time--as long as it takes, in fact--to teach us something until we know it, until it transforms us to be a little more like his Son. The thing is, it feels virtually impossible in our instant-gratification culture to understand the goodness of slowness, to be patient with the process and see how much we can grow in it. So, when I pray about something--a friend's discouragement, a student's pain, a marriage I know of that's not doing well--I expect to see: something. And if I don't, though I might keep praying, I'll brainstorm ways I can "help" God along. In a few cases, I have stopped praying and instead cried out to God in anger at his seeming slowness in helping. And then I assigned myself the responsibility of caring for the person (because obviously I can do a better job). The problem with my system--okay, the multiple problems with my system--are that (a) God loves the person infinitely more than I ever could, (b) he knows them infinitely better than I ever could, and (c) he's infinitely wiser than I will ever be. So trying to take their growth into my own hands without waiting on God may actually hinder them from learning what he wants them to learn and hearing him speak. The past few months have been a lesson in humility and trust--trusting God to take care of others and move in their lives at the time and pace that he knows is best. It's hard, but I'm learning the value of waiting on the Lord for others--of committing people to him consistently and then discerning whether and in what way he wants to use me to help them. Just in the past few months, as I'm learning to wait, God has given me the gracious gift of seeing and hearing (from their mouths) his work in others--the perfect ways he's leading them without my "help." These glimpses help me trust him a little more each time I see them. Though I'm certainly not cured of my ways, I'm already seeing how much pressure this takes off. I don't have to figure out how to help others and move them along; I can simply be free to love them without judging their "progress," to encourage them to keep listening to God, to celebrate with them as they share what he's doing. I can see that this lesson I'm learning is part of his good, slow work in me right now. And I guess in this case, I can be glad for his view of time, because even if it takes me a thousand days to grasp this humility and trust--he might still think I'm a fast learner. Posted by Lisa Rieck
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January 28, 2009Pardon My FrenchOoh la la! One of my authors, writing of a freak encounter with an unwashed rodent, let slip a naughty word. I'm blushing, I think. We may be edgy over here at Likewise Books, but we're not typically that edgy. Normally our policy on vulgarities follows the policy of magazines, such as Time and others: either edit around it so it's no longer necessary, or strike the damning characters so that no one's virgin eyes are deflowered. So, for example, Lady Macbeth might be edited to the more family-friendly "Out, d*** spot!" Or, to keep it interesting, "Out, d*** s***"--in the event that I was feeling a little naughty myself. On the rare occasion when such edits will actually subvert the intent of the author, we will soberly leave the word unobscured. The first time this problem came across my desk, it was assigned to me. An author had used a careless word, and his editor had failed to sniff it out. During a final review the word caught the attention of my sharp-eyed boss, and he commissioned me to review the entire book for other instances. I spent the better part of an hour giggling like a seventh grader as I typed every four-letter word I'd ever been spanked over into the search field in Microsoft Word. I felt like the George Carlin of the Christian publishing industry. (Google it.) An hour in my hot little hands and that manuscript earned itself a G rating, thank you very much. So I'm accustomed to editing out the bad language of authors. But here I'm presented with a curious dilemma: the offending word is written in French. This isn't the author trying to get around my puritanical editing; given the context, it's actually appropriate--a French epithet employed in a conversation that actually happened. The pottymouth in question is a Francophone. (Google it.) Most of the author's audience are likely not Francophones, so only a percentage of the book's readers will know they're being sworn at. But I'll know, and the publishers in Francophone countries who are interested in translating the book for their audience will know. And my boss, with his annoyingly French surname, will also know. And when he reads the book, the m**** will hit the fan, if you catch my meaning. So I'm editing the word out of the book. That is, perhaps, what Jesus would do, if Jesus were a twenty-first-century editor of Christian books for the American marketplace. Right? Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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January 22, 2009The Jacket on the Girl in the Orange DressYou can't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can judge the cover. The forthcoming book The Girl in the Orange Dress needed a jacket design appropriate to both its contents and its audience. We found ourselves with two great cover options, so we asked you to vote. You can read the full details here. While the contest was heated, with four hundred people voting and contacting us to elaborate on their vote, ultimately one cover clearly dominated. So feast your eyes on the winning cover here; in a few months you'll be able to feast your eyes on the whole book. By the way, we haven't forgotten that we promised a free copy of the book to five random responders. The winners will be announced in a forthcoming Likewise Notebook, an occasional e-mailed update on the goings and doings of Likewise Books by InterVarsity Press, and at the Likewise Facebook group. Good luck! May the orange dress be with you. Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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January 9, 2009All Right. Stop Voting.Thanks to all who participated in our cover survey for The Girl in the Orange Dress. We're closing the polls now. We'll take a little time to tally the results and announce the winning cover (and the winners of the random drawing) in the near future here and elsewhere. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about the book's author, Margot Starbuck, click here. If you're wondering what other funky books are in the hopper or in our warehouse, click here. If you want to get updates and be in the running for other book giveaways, click here. If you want to do nothing whatsoever, click here.
Ha ha, that last one was a joke. Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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January 6, 2009You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover, but You Can Judge the CoverComing soon to a store near you is The Girl in the Orange Dress, a story of struggle with the fatherhood of God by Margot Starbuck. Here's what novelist Lisa Samson had to say about it:
We need your help as we bring this book to publication. We have two very different cover designs under consideration. Which would you take home and read? Which tells you what you need to know about the book? Click here to vote at Survey Monkey. Five respondents will be selected randomly to get a copy of the book when it releases in July 2009! (If you work for InterVarsity Press, please don't vote. It's not that we don't care, it's just . . .) 1.
Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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January 1, 2009New Year, New RabbitI hope you don't think we forgot that the first of every month is our monthly "Rabbit" challenge. So let me be the first to welcome you to 2009, and let me also be the first to wrest victory from your hands this new year. Rabbit! Rabbit! Happy new year!Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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