I woke up this morning to open my email and find a message from Steve Riley, the best publicist in the world, that the writer of the blog Penny Carnival had mentioned my book.
That’s nice, I thought, and I clicked on the link.
Nice does not cover it. I hope you will read this Penny Carnival post – not because it is about me, me, me. It isn’t. It’s about the meaning of prayer beads and the purpose of writing about them. And the author of the blog, Megan Cooley, is very perceptive and totally gets what I was trying to convey in the book and in the CraftSanity interview. Megan, thank you so much. You have humbled me and made me so grateful for the opportunity to reach people like you.
And another lovely mention on Laura Brittain’s blog, Heart of Compassion Malas. Laura recently left a comment on one of my blog postings and said how she loved to make malas and posts some for sale on Etsy. We’re going to talk to her in more depth in a future post.
While we are talking about good things, I got this comment about my post on Seattle’s St. James Cathedral from Patty Bowman, the church’s director of outreach. She said I could share it with you:
Hi, Kimberly. Thanks so much for your email. I read your blog entry, and
was very touched to hear how much you enjoyed your prayer time at the
cathedral. We are pleased to be able to have the cathedral open all day for
prayer — for parishioners and for visitors such as yourself.
I’m also pleased that you sent this email to me, because I’ve recently
become hooked into beads and beading. I’m a lifelong Catholic, and when I
was a child, it was our family’s practice to pray the rosary every night
together. So I guess I’ve always had beads in my life as an aid to prayer,
but only recently discovered the joy of creating jewelry with beads. I like
it for many reasons: for one, it’s a very forgiving hobby, if I don’t like
how something turned out, I can simply take it apart and start over. I’m
also constantly amazed at the variety of stones that come from the earth,
which invites meditation on the wonderful diversity of God’s creation. And
then there’s the stories behind the beads, which I’m only beginning to see
— how beads were crafted, where, by whom, and what they signify in
different cultures. So much to learn!
I agree. So much to learn. And all of it from the great people I am meeting as a result of writing about prayer beads.