This first post is dedicated to my dear friend Abby R. for her support in getting it up and running. It will be interesting to see how this online journal works with three contributors (a fourth may be added in the future).

I started an online reading class for the first time at the beginning of the month. I chose an author I knew virtually nothing about, Flannery O’Connor. Upon reading the first story in the book (also the title), “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, I was very perplexed. A petty, lazy boy thinks up ways to provoke his fussy mother, and eventually drives her to a heart-attack, resulting in death before his eyes.
I was told she was a ‘Christian’ author and there was much to learn from her. As I have continued reading, I’m fascinated by her writing, and the Christian virtues she displays.
The stories depict petty, but normal people who let their pettiness grow until they do and unthinkable deed, like the murder mentioned above. There is a vast amount of prejudice in her characters, and O’Connor uses it and their pettiness to correlate exactly along the faults of the readers. I have to say, I've been watching my own selfish ways.


"All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal." ~Flannery O'Connor


Rachel