What Child IS This? Mary Cartledge-Hayes, 1985. All rights reserved.

 My friend Claire just sent me a message on facebook saying she couldn't find a copy of this piece anywhere in her house and wants to use it in a sermon tomorrow.

This story first appeared in the Winter 1985 issue of the Christian feminist journal Daughters of Sarah. One Sunday I was tracked down in Sunday school; there was a phone call for me in the church office.  The editor of The Witness (Mary Lou...  Mary Ann... Somebody help me here) had just read the story and wanted to use it as the editorial for their Ash Wednesday/beginning of Lent issue. (Hadn't thought of it that way, had you?)  The story appeared in The Witness, Vol. 68, No. 2, Feb. 1985. Other lore surrounding this piece is that somebody almost fell off a bus in Chicago when she read it.  Nancy Hardesty became one of my dearest friends when we met at a conference and, over the closing meal, I told her I'd had some things published in Daughters. She asked some questions, and I mentioned the story about Jesus being born a girl.  She immediately teared up and said, "I love that story."  And here it is, almost 25 years later and as new and relevant now as when I wrote it.

Copyright 1985. All rights reserved.

the first 40%

I was cleaning out files this evening and had an envelope in my hand to pitch when I flipped it over and saw this statement from Deb. I was on the phone with her at the time, and we were trying to finish up a project when she said the following:

"I always forget that the initial work takes 40% of the time."

Her statement lays out a problem most of us deal with over and over and over. We have in our heads an idea of the work to be done on a project. We reach the end point. And then we do all of the things that must be done for a completed project to move from our own personal brains out into the world. You know: the other 60% that's not done - heck, usually it's not even started.

The tenet applies to projects of all sizes. Deb and I were probably completing a book proposal when she made the statement, but I ran into the 60% this week while finishing my column for Today's Woman magazine. Got the big scene written that was to constitute the piece and drew what I thought was the conclusion -- except it only took up two sentences, and that was stretching it. Where I come from, that means there's something more important to say, if only I can determine what it is. I made a few reference phone calls, walked the dog a time or two, and generally bored myself half to death. Finally, I remembered a second story, one told to me years ago, that shifted my understanding of what I thought I was talking about.

I'd have guessed I'd done 90% of the work when I completed that first run at writing. Turns out Deb was correct, though: I was only at about 40%. With the new story included and a segue to glue the two stories together, I was at 100% -- unless you count the cliches and flat diction sprinkled here and there. Once the whole piece is at 100%, I do one or two (okay, three) final look-sees. That's my chance to plump up the pillows and straighten the comforter and put a vase containing a yellow posie on the dresser. That's my chance to end up with a piece that when I see it again in a few months or years I'll find something in it to admire, even if I disagree completely with my own conclusions. And that's how I reach tranquility in my professional life.