I have just finished reading Mutant Message Down Under. Re-reading actually because I read it when it first came out and maybe once after that too, and again now. There were many messages in this book that echo what God tells us in Heavenletters™.

There are two incidents I remember very well. (more…)

The other day I wrote about a natural experience of happiness. I had the experience. It didn’t come from the outside, although, I must say that the outside is so beautiful here that there should be a celebration of it every day. But, in any case, I was quite proud of myself that I got to be happy from the inside.

Then today, as much as I didn’t want to, I started thinking about situations where I knew I couldn’t be happy.  (more…)

The morning I wrote this blog entry down, I woke up with a thought about myself, the exact words of which I cannot remember now.

(more…)

I wanted Lauren very much.

I nursed her.

I was able to be home with her until she was four.

I read her stories. It was a mutual delight. I discovered Winnie the Pooh, and loved it. Lauren loved it too.

(more…)

I love so much about Godwriting™. I also love so much being able to be part of other people’s learning to Godwrite™. What a privilege. Can this be true? It is. I know it is. And yet it is unbelievable to me.

Anyway, God and the people who come to the workshops do it all. I’m just kind of there, well, maybe herding a little bit. I see it as herding the people away from misconception.  Perhaps the words guide and lead would be more fitting, but I love one-syllable Anglo-Saxon words like herd. (more…)

Bernie Siegel, M.D., author, great friend to Heavenletters, sent in this excerpt from a newspaper column he writes.  He sent it in response to the recent Heavenletter #4055,  Doing Your Best.

Read this excerpt. (more…)

An email from my friend Marie Zenack, gives a personal take on Robin Lim in Bali whom CNN recently awarded a Hero  Award:

Dear Gloria,

Robin has been delivering 20 - 30 or so babies a month for years in her present clinic. Before she had a clinic for expectant mothers to come to, she would be picked up by a dad at the spur of a moment on a motor cycle  (often she didn’t even know him,) and ride on the back of the motorcycle. Then she would deliver the baby, stay and establish breast feeding, and return some days later. (more…)

This writing hint applies to fiction-writing.  And, no, dear Charles, sad to say, this isn’t the brilliant idea I had thought of earlier and then forgot!

This is something I read somewhere long ago, and it seems that a lot of fiction writers never heard of it. (more…)

When I go to the library, I usually pick out about ten books, wanting to give each one a try. I do read to escape. Escape what I don’t exactly know.

Usually, there are a few books I can’t seem to get into. They just aren’t interesting to me, and I put them down, and they go back to the library unread, and no further thought about them. (more…)

There are two books from childhood that I know had a great influence on me. This one was in fourth grade:  A Tree for Peter by Kate Seredy.

When I look back at this book now, I realize that it is a spiritual book. I treasured this book long before I knew the word spiritual.

Looking back, I think it fed something in me, that it actually could have been some kind of sign of what was to come. Looking back, I think this. At the time, I just loved this book and read it again and again.

Of course, many many children read this book and may or may not have been influenced by it the way I was. This is how it is with everything, isn’t it?

On a site I found in Google just now, people wrote their thoughts about this book that is still being published. I don’t think anyone said how God-revealing this book is. I’ll go back and take another look and see about writing down my thoughts there. I hope I do it.

Right now I’m talking with dear friends who come to this blog.

A Tree for Peter had an enormous influence on me. I remember getting the book from the library and reading it over and over again.  Without knowing what it was at the time, unable to name it, I would say that A Tree for Peter gave me a lead to God.  A Tree for Peter was far more to me than the story it told. I believe it awakened me to an unseen dimension, and gave me a knowing of God that I had no name for.

The basic story is of Peter, a little boy in Shantytown, a very poor place. There is no hope in Shantytown. Peter’s mother works hard and long every day except Sunday, and Peter is left alone. One day a tramp comes to Shantytown and befriends this lonely little boy. I forget how it happened, but Peter begins to call the tramp King Peter. And, indeed, this tramp is not a tramp at all, of course, for he brings light and unity to Shantytown.

I believed this book planted a seed of faith in me. It opened me to a faith in God that I was unaware of until Godwriting™ started spilling out, setting off a hint of something great in my life. I just knew that this book was important to me. I don’t know how many times I read it.

I see that the author and illustrator, Kate Seredy, died in 1975. I wonder why I never thought to write to her when I could have. I just never thought of it until now.

There is another book from childhood, from the summer before second grade, that influenced me deeply in quite a different way, a much more relative way. A lady on our street gave me that book, and, then, lo and behold, it was a book we read in second grade — or the teacher read to us. That book was Clematis by a sister and brother, Bertha B. Cobb (Author), Ernest Cobb (Author), A. G. Cram (Illustrator.) Clematis was an orphan girl, and finally all her dreams come true. Do we, as children, all identify with Clematis, or was it just me?

So many years later, my daughter, Lauren, found a copy of Clematis off the web and gave it to me. I will have to find someone with a scanner and copy the illustrations. They were on shiny paper, and, without know what identification was,  I identified with that little girl.

But here’s the cover:

Can’t you just see her eagerness? From the city, she was on her way to the country!

Now that I think of it, the illustrations in both of these books had an enormous influence on me as well as the words.

What is a favorite book of yours from childhood? And will you tell us about it and why it holds a special place in your heart?