3/4/2010
Catholic singer-songwriter writes book about helping out God
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| Catholic singer-songwriter writes book about helping out God |
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Ed Langlois
SALEM — It takes most of us decades to figure out happiness comes in softening to the will of the Almighty.
Catholic singer-songwriter Julie Hoy is giving youngsters a head start on that central act of discernment in her first book, a story for children that is meaningful for adults, too.
Could I Paint the Sky? (40 pages, Wavelength Media of Salem, $19.95 with CD and and $15.95 without) concerns the vocational adventure of a girl named Madeline Judith.
The girl appreciates pretty things, especially the extravagant colors of creation.
“God is a really good artist,” she muses. “Every day and every night there is so much to paint.”
The big-hearted Madeline Judith, based on a younger version of Hoy’s own teenage daughter, thinks God might like some help painting the biggest work of all — the sky. So she prays. But she gets the somewhat disappointing sense that God says no. But she also feels that God has other things for her to do. She persists, but finds that God’s will is best lived out in the small beauties of everyday life, especially love and open-hearted kindness.
Hoy says the project started when she and her daughter — Maddie — were driving back to Salem from Mount Angel during a stunning sunset. Maddie made the comment that God has a real gift for art, then puckishly added, “Well, actually, I painted the sky for you.”
That began a conversation and exercise of imagination. The next day, Hoy had a draft of the children’s book, something she had never done before.
Then fiction became reality as Hoy wondered what to do with the text. She tried to illustrate it herself, but that was clearly not her gift. Friends and people at workshops she led loved the story and urged her on. That was how God was getting the message through, she figures.
Hoy sent the manuscript out and met with rejection. One company liked it and sent it around, but she got no publishing offers. Finally, the outfit that prints her CD covers (she has made 10 so far) seized the project. Two artists started and stopped and then Hoy ran into a University of Oregon student she had known since he was a boy. Evan Bartholomew took on the job and finished it in six weeks, a far cry from the year illustrators usually take.
Hoy got help when a Salem philanthropist who admires her work called her one day and asked if she had any projects that needed a boost. Though bashful about the grant, Hoy accepted it, even offering to give the money back as the book sold. The donor laughed that off.
Hoy’s husband, who is in medical management, was in the middle of a five-month layoff, one of the casualties of the tanking economy. “One of our jokes at the time was that the book should be called Can I Paint Your House?’” she says.
The husband is working again now and the book was published this year.
The lesson of the story of Madeline Judith, and of the tale of getting the book published, is the same, Hoy explains: “It’s not about me. It’s about seeking what God has for me to do. You have to just be paying attention. Every day there is something for you to do.”
Hoy’s next project is a new CD of faith songs. Could I Paint the Sky? includes a CD of Hoy reading the book and singing a song that grew out of it.
Like Jesus’ parables, Hoy’s book “touches the child in all of us,” says Father Tim Mockaitis, pastor of Queen of Peace Parish, Hoy’s spiritual home.
The chief question of the book, “What can I do?” should be on our lips all day long, says the priest.
“To see God present in the simple everyday ‘little things’ of life is to see God from a child’s perspective,” Father Mockaitis explains.
“To grow in kindness and love after the example of of Jesus is to grow in faith. Julie reminds us that, in the end our lives echo the words of St. Paul to, ‘live a life worthy of the calling you have received.’”
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