Today was a big day at the Bass household--I received the first copy of my new book, "Christianity for the Rest of Us," in the mail and my daughter started her first day of third grade.  The connection between the two events seemed spiritually palpable to me.  In my experience, writing is like parenting and parenting is like writing.

Holding the new book, I felt all the pride of new parenthood and the relief of the birthing part FINALLY being over.  "It exists!  It is real!," I squeal on the phone to my husband. "And it looks so good."  I spend hours looking it over--just like a mother counting the toes of her newborn--checking for any little mistakes or defects.  "It is perfect," I announce proudly to a friend.  I often hear other authors describe writing as a birthing process.  My new book was no exception: conceived in joy, it grows quietly and privately for a long time, and then, eventually, through editing and re-editing and designing, the whole bloody (in the literal and not the British sense of the word) thing is pushed out into the world.

And then, just like the little blond girl going to third grade, you send it out on its own.  You hope and pray that others will love what you've produced, cherishing it as you do, and not do violence to it. For a book, like a child, is a gift to the world--a gift that has to be shared with others, to which others will respond as they choose.  You can't control who will appreciate and love the gift, nor can you control the ambivalent, the ignorant, or the schoolyard bully.

If writing is like parenting, the opposite is equally true.  For in raising my daughter, I realize that we are writing a life.  It is about more than teaching her, keeping her safe, and helping her stand on her own.  It is about gracing her life with stories--stories of the past, of her family, of her faith, of our culture, of politics, of meaning. Those stories will, I know, interweave with her own experience and create her life.  And, as many postmodern philosophers insist, we are both the actors and authors of our lives.  So, parenting is a crafting of story, of words and experience that become the fabric of another person's life.  Eventually, she will edit it all in her own unique way. But, until then, we are story-tellers together, writing our lives as our narrative unfolds.  One day, it will be hers.  Her story.

At that point, I am drawn into the mystery of it all.  Ultimately, the Christian tradition reminds us that God is the author of all, the giver of all good gifts, the Story, the Word that enlivens all.  In the midst of writing and mothering, God's narrative unfolds in my life and my life pushes toward deeper participation of that story.  It is one of the most thoughtful paradoxes of theology:  I am actor and author; even as God is my author and primary actor in life.  The line between the transcendent and the mundane dissolves.  And she is actor and author; even as God is her author and primary actor.  The boundaries between the three of us are but thin membranes.  And I remember her in the womb when the three of us were truly one.  As it was in the beginning, it always will be.  I am left in wonder.

Of course, with the welcome exception of the Holy Spirit, I am also left alone.  I stand on the school stairs and watch the long blond hair flying in the wind as my daughter heads in the building.  She remembers--briefly--to turn and wave.  "Bye, mom!"  she yells.   We may be connected, but she is working hard to thicken the membrane.  She's busy writing her story.

I wave back--staring in wonder.  I hope she understands someday about the interconnected stories, about individual life and the communal life we share in God.  I clutch my new book close to my chest.  At least one of my offspring hasn't left home quite yet.  "Christianity for the Rest of Us" may have left the womb, but right now, it is next to my heart. Another couple of weeks before it leaves me for the world.