Wednesday I Twitted Myself Thus:

No visitors.

No phone calls.

I spent Wednesday in uninterrupted work!

Got 67 pages edited.

And I feel wonderful about that. With God’s help, I hope to have this manuscript ready to go to the printer for a proof copy by Friday.

Of, course, I’d hoped to have reached this step two months ago. But as they say, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans”.

I’m preparing an updated edition of the diary of Richard Rogers, a 16^th Century English Puritan, because I find his diary so inspiring and helpful in my own daily life.

Back on January 3^rd and 4^{th ,} (in my blog archives) my posts tell about how this work got started and why I’m so excited about it. (There’s a picture of Rogers there too).

If, God willing, I can get in another two days uninterrupted work this week, I’ll feel like I’m in Hog Heaven!

Rogers felt the same way about his work.

On August 4, 1587. Rogers wrote, “I cannot yet settle my self to my study, but through unfitness of mind, weakness of body, and partly discontinuing of diligence thereat, I am held back. And I am in every kind of study so behind hand, more than I was some years agone, that I am much discouraged”.

A month later he said, “ Sometime by unfitness and journeying my study is intermitted, and, except in place thereof my mind be well taken up some other way, even that is cause sufficient for hindering my purpose in proceeding. For I am exceedingly cast down when my study is hindered”.

And on October 30, 1587, he wrote, “My study, as time hath suffered, hath not been unpleasant to me nor much neglected, save that I have been much abroad in good company and visiting the sick. Once in this while, I see mine untoward heart to my study; it appeared so gross to me that I twitted myself thus…”

I know what he means.

———

I feel a sense of loss.

Humanist author Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

He wrote 14 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays.

Among his works were Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Galapagos, Breakfast of Champions, Welcome To The Monkey House, and Deadeye Dick.

My favorite among his many quips is: “The only reason God put us on this earth — and don’t let anybody ever tell you different — is to fart around”.

Another is: “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved”.

Mr. Vonnegut and I viewed Jesus in quite different lights. While I’m convinced that Jesus Christ is Lord, God come in the flesh, Mr. Vonnegut was a humanist who did not believe in God.

He once said, “What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that. Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person”?

On another occasion Vonnegut said, “We had a memorial service for Isaac Asimov a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke”.

I feel a sense of loss.

He made me laugh.

He made me think.