Evening Reading

I've been spending evenings watching some wild movies and reading some great books. The other evening I read Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. I love her books - they have such an interesting rhythm. She writes:

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

Barbara Brown Taylor said something similar at our clergy conference a few years ago. She said you should always preach with the idea that someone in the congregation has less than six months to live and you don't want to waste their time.

One of the films I've watched this week is Y tu mamá también . I don't know if I knew that I had only a short while to live that I would want to go on a road trip with two sex crazed teenagers and try to teach them how to be better lovers but it was an interesting movie. Okay, so I'm stretching for a connection here. But the film is worth seeing if you can handle the sex and language (I give this warning because I got blasted once for recommending a movie in a sermon and not clarifying that it had rough language).

Don't know what I'll watch tonight. It is summer time and I haven't watched the Godfather trilogy yet. It is usually my ritual to welcome summer. That and Mr. Baseball, Field of Dreams, and Bull Durham. I'll let you know.