The Book Bully

In the year that I returned home after studying in Vancouver, my friend Karen and I led a women's Bible study. The group of girls who gathered weekly was diverse in age, interests, background, and just about everything else that distinguishes difference. But it evolved into a place where we could each air our insecurities and uncertainties openly, where we didn't expect answers, and instead were offered empathy and encouragement. It was a Safe Space. At one meeting, Karen shared a piece of wisdom from C.S. Lewis: It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. There are few writers who are able to both shame and encourage simultaneously; in two sentences, Lewis ma

A few days ago, my friend Lauren and I were sitting on my bed, eating snacks and Googling how much it would cost to see Brody Jenner DJ at a local Hallowe'en party, when she noticed a framed picture from a Broadway musical on my bookshelf. "Wait," she said, agog. "Did Daniel Radcliffe actually autograph that picture?" "Yeah. My lifetime friend and her husband got it for me when they went to New York on their honeymoon. They ran across midtown to get to the theatre in time to meet him at the stage door, and they thrust this picture at him and he signed it! They didn't tell me until they came home from their trip and asked to come over right away. I was totally into seeing their pictures and hearing about their adventure, but as soon as they came over, they insisted on showing me this video on their phone; lo and behold, it was of Daniel Radcliffe signing this picture! And as I shrieked, she produced this framed picture. I, of course, wept."