Excerpt From Words Made Flesh Author: Patricia Lynn Reilly As an author I have never begun a project with a blank page. In my experience writing is more like gathering words, regularly turning toward them, and then crafting them to reach beyond, beneath, in back of themselves. Each idea, outline, and assignment begins with a ritual reading of my journals and writings for inspiration, for the kernel that will eventually become the chapter, article, keynote address, lecture, performance piece, or book.             As the words travel from my journal (private musings rooted in the fleshiness of my tears, sweat, longing, arousal, and fear) to book, article, and lecture (public platforms and positions crafted for an audience), they are often drained of their personal vulnerability, of the messiness of ordinary life that gave birth to them in the first place.       Yet underneath the public words, the private fleshiness pulsates: there she is, the abandoned girl, longing for her mother, heard in the reworked prayers of the feminist theologian: “Our Mother, who art within us;” the fearful girl, befriending the darkness of solitary confinement, heard in the priestess’ tribute to Mother Darkness; the fierce adolescent, wrestling for her place as world-changer among the boys, heard in the iconoclast’s challenge: “God the father has remained an undisturbed idol for too long;” and the troubled young woman, struggling to love her body, to come out of hiding, heard in the words of the WomanChurch minister: “It is right and good that you are woman.” Listen deeply enough to any author’s words and you will touch their personal vulnerability.       Once tossed to the winds as public writings, many of the selections you’ll read in this anthology have developed a life of their own. Some are used by others in their dissertations, published books, magazines, newsletters, web postings, and course readers. They are quoted by kindred spirits—words from Imagine a Woman in Love With Herself quoted by the founder of Femail Creations as her inspiration for dreaming big, and by angry detractors—words from A God Who Looks Like Me used as evidence that the Teletubbies are part of a godless conspiracy. Some of the selections you’ll read have lived quieter lives, remaining on the pages of my journal until now. In the fullness of time, musing becomes word becomes journal entry becomes public expression becomes flesh again in the experience of you, the reader.       In response to claiming my first four books as "daughters," my male friends have asked, "When are you going to give birth to a son?" Words Made Flesh is a love-child, born of the trouble and beauty, gift and challenge of my own life. It will take you on a journey through the first half of my life. Even when my words are addressed to a couple, an audience, a congregation, a publisher, or a class, they tell my story. Listen in the spaces between and around and within the words, and you will hear my childhood longings. Nothing has been lost or forgotten. In the roundabout way life works, all is re-membered, re-surrected, re-constituted, redemptively re-enacted. Elevate not the beginning. Despise not the ending.       All is seasonal, not harsh.* Honor coming and going, holding on and letting go,       joy and sorrow, reunion and separation. Hold onto nothing. Participate in everything.       Notice all that is and bless it, as it shifts and changes in a moment. A full emptiness, unfolding from the center—       always new, always now, always and not yet, always and never. Written by Patricia Lynn Reilly. Excerpt from Words Made Flesh. Phrase "seasonal, not harsh" inspired by May Sarton. ************ Internet Special: 3 Copies of Words Made Flesh: $25

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