About the book
According to Lu takes the reader through a series of spiritual parables, letters, and narratives, enabling them to get to know each storyteller. In the process, the reader witnesses how each character works within their social and familial roles or challenges them and questions expectations.
It is my hope these accounts -- this gospel -- serves to encourage women to share their stories... about their lives, loves, vocations and avocations, and spiritual journeys.
Order Your Copy
Resources
The child knew. She knew I saw visions of wellsprings and swords, of things ancient and new, of beginnings and of endings. I grasped her tiny hands, knew they were tingling as mine were, and spoke words of blessing that came to me, just as the words had so long before, words for all to hear.
Water. It is remarkable. Gives life, cleanses...
It is patient. It carves at rocks and soils, sculpting endlessly, making its own beds.
It is generous, feeding and feeding itself and those of its kind, its kin—the streams, the rivers, the lakes, the sea.
It is beauty, in itself and reflecting. It is blue, crystal clear, or gray and billowing and stormy, reflecting the sky and the weather. It sings. It blesses. It rumbles and tumbles.
I see you in the objects you made with your own two hands, with love and compassion your only motives.
According to Lu is an...
Award-winning Finalist in the Fiction: Inspirational and Fiction: Novella categories of the 2020 International Book Awards.
How might celebrated spiritual texts differ...
...if they had delved deeper into women’s lives, or had even been authored by women? If sacred writings had illuminated and celebrated women’s knowledge and experiences, in what diverse and creative ways might they have inspired others?
Ann Greenseth’s novella, According to Lu, is a fictional example of such a text. Through its parables, letters, and narratives, the reader comes to know each storyteller, and witnesses how each works within their social and familial roles or challenges them and questions expectations. These accounts testify to their spiritual and emotional lives—to their dreams, desires, actions, lessons, and trials.
The characters’ sacred experiences and spiritual truths touch on varied themes including allegiance, passion, equity, power, rebirth, and more. Each theme and story recognizes the Sacred in the storyteller even as the characters themselves come to recognize and appreciate the Sacred in the women around them.
Lu, the collector of these narratives and “editor” of this anthology, sends the treasured compilation of testaments to Thea, her friend, kinswoman, and colleague. In doing so, Lu intends to share them not only with Thea, but with a much larger audience. It is their hope these accounts can serve to encourage women to share their stories and, in turn, comfort and inspire their friends, sisters, mothers, and daughters.
A few of my
poems...
Want to read more? Go to TBSH Studio. Read poetry! Then take a few moments
to look at some fabulous art.