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Nothing can stop you
Originally published in the 1978 pamphlet titled “Art and beauty: expression and appreciation”
When I was in my twenties the bottom dropped out of my world. Within one year I had lost the remaining members of my family, as well as my savings in an unwise business venture, and I seemed totally to have lost my sense of direction. I remember sitting on the old family horsehair sofa with my cat (just about all I had left) and thinking that things couldn't get worse.
Then the thought came, If things couldn't get worse, they were bound to get better. This wasn't perhaps a very profound bit of metaphysical reasoning, but it was a ray of light in the dark. I sat there suddenly feeling like a child at Christmas, waiting for a special present. I said aloud, "All right God, what do I do next?" Piercing through the funereal gloom came the answer. "Write something funny for the Monitor." Normally I would have considered this a piece of whimsical imagining. Why would it be sensible to write something funny for The Christian Science Monitor when I wasn't a funny writer? I was a serious advertising copywriter—all business. But I had asked God for direction, and if it took this form I wasn't going to turn a deaf ear. I wasn't going to wait for the burning bush See Ex. 3:2-4 before I got a move on. God's answer didn't have to come like a voice out of a thundercloud. I knew from the deep peace within me this was God's silent directing.
So, I started to think about some amusing things that had happened to me and my family, and I began to write. The ideas came so fast it was barely possible to keep pace with them. I'd wake up in the middle of the night remembering funny situations and would scribble them down. In about two weeks I had five articles typed, which was a marvel. Better still, they were all promptly published, and I came to work for the Monitor.
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1978 - PAMPHLET
Art and beauty: expression and appreciation
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