Random Bits and Pieces – September

I was going to share this on Wendesday, but I decided I couldn’t wait another moment. I have some fun news and some great book reviews to pass on and even though it’s Monday, I’ve decided to share.

Redbud Writers Guild
As a writer I’ve been feeling like I needed to find a way to expand and stretch myself and get to know some more artists and authors and writers out there. So, I began hanging out a lot more on Twitter. @TinaBustamante is my little twitter handle, just in case you want to connect there. While on Twitter, I started coming across so many incredible men and women writers – great writing quotes, blog posts with helpful advice, and I began to feel a greater sense of belonging in the larger writing community. There was this one group that kept jumping out at me and I looked them up – A wonderful writers guild of bold and daring women trying to make a difference. A new friend, Marlena Graves, encouraged me to apply and they accepted my application. I am a new member of the Redbud Writers Guild! Please check out their website, get to know this amazing group of writers and speakers … well worth your time.

What I’ve Been Reading:
The last few books I read were some of the best books I’ve read all year. My sister, mom, and my friend, Karissa sent me books for my birthday and so in August and the beginning of September I read:

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
Oh my goodness. A fellow blogger and incredible writer mentioned this novel in one of her posts and I was intrigued. We tend to like a lot of the same stories and so I asked my mom to get it for my birthday. My sister sent it to me while she was in Seattle on a visit. It was such a beautiful novel. It takes place during WWII in Germany and in France. Honestly, I wasn’t very excited for yet another WWII novel. Don’t we have enough? Maybe not. It took Anthony Doerr ten years to get his story finished and I felt the weight of those ten years as it wrapped me up, whispered hope and integrity, light and loss, suffering and a great gentle silence. At the end, when I read the final pages and quietly closed the book, sitting on my bed late in the night, I cried feeling the great questions of life and death, evil and human responsibility invite me to sit with them and keep them company and be overwhelmed with them.

Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout:
This was the only Elizabeth Strout novel I hadn’t read. I have read her most recent The Burgess Boys about three times and I’ve shared how much I appreciated it. And I was deeply grateful for Olive Kitteridge. But Abide with Me sort of left me speechless. It’s a quiet book, many would probably find it boring and wonder what in the world it’s about. I read it in two big gulps and spent an afternoon in awe once I was finished. This story was incredible to me. Somehow Strout captured humanity and Christianity and cruelty and gossip and the desperate need we all have to accept ourselves and give ourselves and our good friends and fellow church members permission to be broken and to be weak, to grieve and mourn and to expect less performance and more love from one another. The novel built and built and then crescendoed in this quiet resolution that left me speechless. It’s her least popular novel – which does not surprise me because it’s about a pastor who’s grieving the loss of his wife in the late 1950’s in a small East Coast town in Maine. But if you have a tender heart and you like quiet books that speak about important things — you might just pick this one up and let Elizabeth Strout work her magic …

And the other book I absolutely adored last month was An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor.  Barbara Brown Taylor was a pastor for many years and in this book she pastored me, she beckoned me in and sat me down and gave me a cup of coffee and talked to me about the geography of faith – in new and old ways, in every day and in extraordinary language. My copy is underlined, ear marked, and crinkled from carrying it around everywhere because as soon as I finished it, I started it all over again. It’s probably one of my new favorite spiritual direction/spiritual formation books. Barbara Brown Taylor gave me courage to accept some of the ways that I love to pray, to go further down old and new roads in my walk with God, and she helped me see that so much of what we do is sacred and holy if we invite God to be on our journey with us. It’s a small book. It won’t take you long, but I encourage you to get a copy and drink it in … It’s well worth your time.

I will let you go now … Thank you for your friendships, your time, your interest. I haven’t shown a lot of pictures lately. This is because our internet is far from satisfactory and it takes a long time to download images. I apologize.

What have you been reading? I would love some recommendations.

Much Love,

Tina