Beryl Singleton Bissell

Thanks to an abundance of rain, cool weather, and overcast skies the roadsides are blanketed with more color than I’ve ever seen before. Daisy’s, sweet clover, Birdseye trefoil, wild roses, hawkweed, fireweed, lupines in swaths or dancing together in the breeze. If you like walking, the scent can be quite intoxicating. If you're allergic, best to view from inside a car. Perhaps it is all this beauty, or maybe just the fact that I've finally finished the sequel to the Scent of God, that prompts me to take a break from single-minded focus to finish the book. Even as I fervidly worked on the manuscript and condensed each chapter into a few sentences for an expanded table of contents, you hovered behind the scenes, reminding me that I have a beautiful family, wonderful friends, and lovely acquaintances with whom I haven’t connected in close to six months. It’s a paradox—humorous but sad—that as our lives grow shorter, time keeps picking up speed. I am no longer young enough to think I have a lot of living ahead of me. I’d like the sequel to be published while I'm still around, not posthumously. I no longer multitask or rush from one activity to another. Now I view with mouth agape at all some people are able to accomplish. I wonder if they've made a pact with their alter ego (perhaps they have more than one) so that while one focuses on a single project, the other flits about picking up the slack and dreaming up a zillion other things to accomplish Now! I've just returned from a ten-day silent retreat at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville that focused entirely on the now: living each moment fully aware. Yet there is such a contradiction in the way we use that word “Now.” Not in its meaning, but as western culture defines it: Do it now! Such pressure does not allow for much awareness. In answer to your many questions asking when the sequel to the Scent of God will be available, all I can say is “I'm working on it.” Have a blessed summer, one with just enough rain and heat to make it spectacular. © Beryl Singleton Bissell 2015