Adapted from Edward Grinnan’s Editor’s Note for the April 2020 issue of Guideposts. If you’d like to subscribe, click here.
Today I noticed a hammock slung between two barren trees. The day was gray, and the hillside was smeared with patches of grimy snow. Winter’s last stand. Had the hammock somehow survived the harsh Berkshire winter, or had some loony optimist battled the frozen mud and hung it in anticipation of spring? I wanted to believe in the optimist. Besides, is there a season more optimistic than spring? We published our first issue in the spring of 1945. What could be more optimistic than the vision Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, had for their little magazine to become a beacon of inspiration for countless millions?
It’s a vision rooted in the belief that personal accounts of everyday faith by people from all walks of life could lift the country up through the transformative power of storytelling. If my years at Guideposts have taught me one thing, it is this: Everyone has a Guideposts story.
Are you a storyteller? Then I invite you to enter our 2020 Guideposts Writers Workshop Contest, which this year will be conducted remotely and online. Some of your favorite writers were discovered through the workshop: Marion Bond West, Sue Monk Kidd and Roberta Messner, to name just a few. You could be next. The deadline to enter is June 26. Be the optimist. Get started today.
Please note: Because the coronavirus outbreak has forced us to work from home and we have not had access to postal mail, only online entries are being accepted this year. If you submitted an entry via postal mail, please use the link above to resubmit online by the end of June.
