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“I think I decided I wanted to be a writer one summer afternoon in my childhood, when the neighborhood pool I was swimming in was temporarily closed due to lightning. I snatched up my towel and huddled on a big porch with the other kids, waiting out the storm.
A man I had never seen before sat down on a plastic lawn chair near me, brought out an illustrated copy of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and offered to read it. Most of the kids left, but two or three of us stayed to listen, sitting cross-legged on the floor around him. As he read, I fell so deeply into the narrative that the thunderstorm around me seemed to be rushing out of the words themselves.
My head was ringing with those words as I walked home. I never knew who this man was, but I never really got over that day.”
Laura Hillenbrand
Author of "Seabiscuit" and "Unbroken"
I think the previous paragraph is almost magical. I found myself weeping as I read it. For this is a marvelous example of what I’ve always called “Momentary Ministry.” And to think that this “man without a name” had the awesome privilege of impacting a child who would become one of the great writers of our time!
“The man with no name” found himself in a momentary time and place to influence a few, and for his great love of literature gave unselfishly of himself, with no agenda other than his love for words, and the audience who could be influenced by them. Even if that audience was just a few children by a pool on a stormy day.
Bill McDonald, PhD
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