Melinda Worth Popham will discuss her memoir, Grace Period: My Ordination to the Ordinary, at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16, in the Palisades Library community room, 861 Alma Real.
The event is hosted by the Friends of the Library and the public is invited.
Popham left home for Yale Divinity School at age 56 after a barrage of painful life events—above all, her teenage daughter’s life-threatening depression. These events brought her to her knees, and a monastic method of meditation became her mainstay as well as her portal to the holy.
In Grace Period, Popham tells the story of one mother’s experience of a daughter’s intractable illness and the discovery that pain is the Miracle-Gro of spiritual growth. The radical, mystical experience that ultimately propelled Popham from Malibu to Yale Divinity School at a pivotal juncture in her life did not lead to the pursuit of late-call ordination to the ministry, but quite simply to her study of God.
Popham now lives in Brentwood and is a long-time parishioner at St. Matthew’s Church in the Palisades. She is a spiritual director and retreat leader, while working on a new novel. She previously wrote Skywater, an award-winning ecological novel (1990).
“Grace Period has been doing so well that my publisher (iUniverse) is bringing out a new edition,” Popham told the News. “It was recently cited in Publishers Weekly’s ‘Meet the Indie Stars 2016’ as one of only 20 indie books to have been awarded a starred review in PW and one of only 9 nonfiction ones.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.