Angels in the Landfill (Mixed Blessings and Saving Graces)
carlynn c
compilation of short stories about loving and losing, laughter and tears, surviving tragedy and how closely God holds us through it all.

recommended by Tim Perry, author of Blessed Is She: Living Lent with Mary (Morehouse/Continuum)

Price:  $4.95

book excerpt

Of Easter Lilies and Love My ficus tree survived all the cold snaps of the winter, except for that last, late killing freeze. The next morning as I bemoaned its ravaged leaves and early demise, I noted the first vestiges of springtime: crocuses breaking ground. The Easter lilies are close to burgeoning as well and I watched the first cloudless sulfur butterfly of the season dry its milky wings on a sunlit rock. Thus began my contemplation of the cycles of life and death, birth and renewal, heights and depths, ecstasy and agony, love and hate all those polarities and paradoxes with which we live. Puzzles and riddles, much of it, for antonyms at their extremes are often next-door neighbors on the circuitous canvas of life. Not linear at all, but round or sometimes ovoid like those brightly- -dyed Easter icons of birth, newness, and childhood glee. Though there is never a good time for a loved one to die, perhaps Easter is the most comforting for Christians, and maybe those of differing beliefs as well. The spring tides rush forth, the azaleas and forsythia bud up, and nearly palpable feelings of hope float freely on the wind. They whisper of renewal, of the promise of blessings to come, and of a love to die for.