I’ve just returned from five days in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, an incredible amalgamation of scholars, poets, artists, pastors, editors and writers.

I attended the bi-annual conference in 2008, just a few months after I signed a book contract with Zondervan and just a few days before I found out I was pregnant. A precarious place in my personal history. I attended the conference that year with my mom (as I did this year) and I listened to Phyllis Tickle and Kathleen Norris and others and I was challenged by their long careers of careful thinking and believing and writing. I returned home and poured myself into the early drafts of Found Art, and I called upon those voices when I had to persevere through the long days of rewriting and editing.

This year, Luci Shaw and Parker Palmer and Mary Karr and Eugene Peterson (did I mention I have a crush on him?) and Scott Russell Sanders all gave me a collective shot in the arm to keep writing, keep asking the most difficult questions, keep probing, and above all, keep a firm grip on the immensity of the sacred. In other words, never allow my writing to be a vehicle for my lofty and unbending knowledge or conclusions but instead a vehicle for my personal discovery and the discovery of human experience. As we write from the place of investigation, we begin “working with hands larger than our own,” to borrow a phrase from Luci Shaw. Beautiful, huh.

Also this year, I sat at a table and signed my book, a moment I would have thought impossible during certain days of this whole journey. I tried to reflect on where I’ve been even as the question of where I’m going looms.

I’ve returned with a suitcase full of books . . . more on that later this week. In the meantime, let me know if something has grounded, inspired, or challenged you recently. I’d love to hear about it.