An autograph? Why, certainly!

Wheeee!! They just sent me my proofs. :-) A thought that has been tucked away in the back of my head for a while is now being dusted off and aired out: I'm going to be published! This is fun!

As my final paper for my certificate of studies in Munich, I wrote (and painstakingly translated--my German wasn't good enough at the time to actually *compose* the thing in German) an analysis of some religious themes in the movie The Sixth Sense. It was one of the longer papers I've written, something like 40 pages, and by the time I'd finished it I had watched the film and the various commentaries so often that I would have happily chucked my DVD in the lake and never uttered the name M. Night Shyamalan again. But the professor liked it, and encouraged me to try to get it published. So I sent a copy off to my seminary advisor, who happens to edit a little theological magazine, and he said, sure, why not, but we'll have to cut it down to a less monstrously obscene size. So he trimmed and weed-whacked a bit until my bloated final project became a sleek 15-page wonder.

It's not an awful paper -- re-reading it doesn't make me cringe -- but it's impressively dry in parts. It's clear from the start that I didn't write it to be an article. My argument is perhaps not watertight, but I think I make a pretty good point, that a little leap of faith can lead to a whole lotta transformation and maybe even a little bit of redemption. And re-reading the beast made me think a little differently about a couple of current situations where a little reorganizing of thoughts was incumbent. So I'm pretty satisfied with the whole endeavor.

I really like the idea of my words being published somewhere--like on actual paper, in an actual journal, sitting on people's actual shelves. Does that make me arrogant and self-centered? Possibly. I doubt anyone will have much to say about the article, although they are publishing my email address along with it (hmm... hope my junk filter isn't too zealous). I have to admit, I also enjoyed garnering a bit of local celebrity at my seminary, where they use this book I wrote about Greek in a couple of classes. But that publishing was a bit of a hack job on the part of the bookstore--just photocopies held together with one of those plastic spines, not even a fancy laminated cover. (I do, however, get royalties, so I'm not complaining. :-) This one's a real magazine, not the Harvard of theological colloquy, but at least bound and stapled in the middle, all organized-like.

Lest you start thinking I've ingested a silver spoon, there are plenty of things that are sucking currently in my life. I'm just not at liberty to say. So y'all get to hear exclusively about the Mini-Triumphs of Mini-Me. Bwa ha ha hahahahaha.