Jo Bower's Blog

There are several things that define me:

I am a pastor’s child – which means I have not lived my whole life in one place. I am fascinated by culture from exposure to Midwestern. Southwestern and Southeastern cultures. I’ve lived in cities such as Wichita, Kansas and Dallas, Texas, but also Alva, Oklahoma,Garden City, Ok, Fredonia,Kansas, Westmoreland, TN, Bowling Green, KY and Deville, LA. All those places have things in common, and they all are very different from each other.

I am a musician. I was once telling a friend that I didn’t think I was the typical musician in nature. After he quit laughing, he assured me. “You talk like a musician, you think like a musician, you feel like a musician….It’s too bad you don’t sing like a musician.” That’s okay… I’m a pianist. I’m passionate about the music. I’m an arranger. I’m married to a pastor and violinist.

I’m a writer. My great-great-great-(I think that’s enough) uncle on my father’s side was James Fenimore Cooper. My father’s mother was a Cooper. All that does give me a bit of inherited talent. What I do with that is my responsibility. I love words… but not quite as much as I love music.

I love God. I am a God follower. I’d say a liberal evangelical. I bet you didn’t even know there was such a thing. If you say an evangelical is one who believes in Jesus as the instrument of salvation, and introduces me to God as I accept him as God’s son, okay. But leave me out of the very conservative,anti-everything that doesn’t look like the way I practice Christianity movement. My Christianity is defined by my relationship with God and others, not what I stand against. I have my personal ideas, but I don’t insist on calling them requirements for salvation. And that’s as close to a soap-box as I intend to go. I love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and my aim is to love my neighbor as myself.

My God-given dream is to reach out to people I will never meet. I have seen some of that happen, and will spend the rest of my life finding ways to live that dream.

I’m married to a terrific man who is a pastor, and couldn’t imagine any other way of life than serving a church.
We’ll find out when we retire, but for now, I’m content.

So, there I am. Not the most exciting person in the world, huh? But hopefully, not the most staid, stubborn, unmovable person in the world either… welcome to my inner life of thought and writing