Overwhelmed and blessed

In the last two days I have received an avalanche of e-mails from people all over the country offering words of encouragement and help in relation to my manuscript intellectual property dilemma. I particularly enjoyed AKMA’s outrage, which resonated deeply with me and made me smile (which I needed!). I am awed and humbled by the care and concern people have expressed. I am blessed to be part of a network that is so rich and deep that I have found an excellent advocate — an intellectual property attorney who has worked in multiple cases involving record companies on behalf of fair use, and who is married to a patristics professor in the GTU. What is the likelihood of that?

I am feeling hopeful now, and energized by the possibility of seeing this book come into print as I have imagined it. I am also going to try and collate some of the stories people have shared with me about their own copyright dilemmas, and the ways in which fear of litigation is having a "chilling effect" on this kind of inquiry. It is disheartening the extent to which many people have simply given up on trying to do this kind of work. I am all the more convinced that theologians need to be paying attention!