Earlier this summer, as I sifted through page-proofs for the 7^th edition of our Clinical Interviewing textbook, my wife and co-author thinned carrots in the garden. Later, while I responded to queries from a Wiley copyeditor in India, she worked on rock art near the river in the July sunshine.

As many of you know, Rita and I have been co-authors for decades. Our first co-written publication appeared as a commentary in the 1986 American Psychologist (volume 41), titled “Ethical considerations for the peace activist psychotherapist.” Cool stuff.

Over the past few years, Rita’s interest in academic writing has waned some, but she’s still helpful, so I don’t mind. I like fresh carrots. The problem is that she’s started a project with a new and far more demanding coauthor. Given the identity of her coauthor, it doesn’t work for me to be jealous. Eight years ago, she started publishing these co-authored works as blogs, posted every Sunday at 9am. When she’s in a good mood, she refers to them as prose poems, prayers, or parables. I won’t mention what she calls them when she’s in a bad mood.

When she and her other co-author are busily writing, I’ve learned it’s best to not interrupt. I’ve also learned—from reading these blogs and listening to her read them to me—about a big omnipresent challenging and empathic entity that changes identities from Black women to dust mites, clouds to cracks in the earth, and flocks of birds to herds of sheep in much less time than the colloquial blink-of-an-eye.

If you’re interested in exploring Rita’s version of The Big Omnipresence, the first volume of Godblogs is now available (speaking of omnipresence) on Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/GODBLOGS-Vernacular-written-Mother-Tongue/dp/B0C9KCGSN9

Many of her readers have noted that these meditative word-art pieces are best taken in small doses. David James Duncan, author of The Brother’s K, the River Why, the forthcoming Sun House, and other amazing novels, wrote a blurb about Rita’s work, featured on the back cover:

From paragraph to paragraph, or sometimes sentence to sentence, or even phrase to phrase, Rita Sommers-Flanagan’s visitations leap—with tireless wit and a welcome downpour of surprises—from trenchant, to despairing, to startlingly funny, to furious, to honest to God divine comforts that just carried me to page 90 when I needed to get to work! As you read, you’ll also ride two pendulums I love, from reverence to irreverence back to reverence, and from deep grief to genuine joy back to grief. Most of all I want to say this: No matter what guise Original Source uses for any particular visit, I believe in Rita’s God. I truly do.

As I mentioned on FB, Rita getting a blurb from DJD makes me flat-out jealous. I still remember reading The Brother’s K on an airplane, and having the flight attendant check on me because I was intermittently laughing and crying. . . which speaks to DJD’s immense writing talents. On the other hand, rather than a bitter jealousy, I can bask in Rita’s reflected glory, right? I mean, after all, I’m her other coauthor.

I hope you’ll check out Rita’s book. I AM one of her biggest fans and one of her biggest coauthors: I’m just not the only one.