this is Joy Williams

"I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. Receptive and responsible. If you don’t do anything with it, you lose it. You stop getting these omens. I love this little church group I go to. The other day we were talking about how God appears or doesn’t appear and how we’re nervous about seeing God, and it was all very interesting, but then somebody piped up, Well, I think God appears often during the day! We just don’t recognize it! For example, I was trying to find my name tag before the ten-thirty service. There I was with all the name tags, I just couldn’t find it, and then I looked down and it had fallen on the floor! I thought, There’s God! Telling me where it was!

You know what I told her? I said that it was really a large name tag. It was. It was huge. How could she misplace it in the first place?"

-Joy Williams, The Paris Review