Proof

 

My seventh (!) book will be published this fall. A book of reflections for next Lent. The proofs came a couple of weeks ago, and once the manuscript for book eight (eight? eight?) went out the door, I had some time and space to devote to this devotional.

I still proof on paper, circling errors with a red ballpoint, pressing into the surface of the paper, leaving a literal wound to mark wounded text. I read it end to end, cold, then again side by side with the text I submitted. Were those snippets of scripture exactly what was in the lectionary? Quotes from the psalms sometimes are pulled from my memory (and my heart and my soul) as I write, not from any specific text. Better check against the source!

When the latest revision of the US English Catholic Lectionary came out, I didn’t add it to my collection. I have the most recent British one, the previous US one, but mostly I turn to the USCCB site or use Give Us This Day. The ritual books in my parish are stored behind the main altar, in a space reserved for quiet meditation in front of the tabernacle. So one afternoon last week, I laid the proofs on the small wooden altar, pulled the Sunday and daily lectionaries from the shelf, and with the Word before me, and the Word at my right hand, I proofed the pericopes. I could have taken the books and proofs to the small library next door, or to the sacristy, but this space felt right.

I used a book called Stones Before the Lord (about monastic architecture) when I taught a course on the history of contemplation in the West. Proofing on the altar left me feeling like I was laying stones of a different sort before the Lord. Stepping stones from Ash Wednesday to Easter, perhaps, or maybe a staircase cut into a cliff taking you from from a rocky beach on the wind-whipped Scottish coast to a chapel nestled high above. Or living stones, to use the image from the first letter of Peter, pulled from my own prayer. Stones I wanted to be properly cut and laid so they might support people's path though next Lent, and not be  stumbling blocks.

I found a few errors and marked them up, now it's headed back to Liturgical Press.

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Proofs. It's been a week of proofs. I proofed yeast last night to make pizza crusts. I proofed this book. I sorted through proofs of once new quantum mechanical theories, snapping a picture or two to remember the work I had done (and long ago published), then sent them into oblivion (actually the recycling bin!).