I have been thinking lately that life can be very pleasant, if you count up all the lovely moments. So, here are three of my recent ones that have stayed with me, cheering me up and along.

Years ago, my husband Brent and I moved to Vancouver so he could do a Master of Divinity at Regent College. I think I can say, although others might disagree, that it was a heyday for Regent.

Personal experience and writing skill engage in a warm embrace in the personal essay. They need each other and they know it. In the personal essay the writer carefully and prayerfully chooses to bare their soul to the reader, offering up some of their most ordinary, tender and difficult experiences to the world as a gift.

The other day I sat in church, two pews back from a young couple with a little girl who has sprouted up in recent weeks, like a tulip. She moved away from their pew, exploring the stand up fan that offered some relief on that muggy, hot Sunday.

I remembered this week one of the nicest things that happened to me last year. Two writing friends sent me pies. Belinda made them. Wendy paid for them. I remembered this because Wendy Nelles died last week, very young in her early 60s.

From the moment a fellow student tapped me on my shoulder at the welcome barbecue to tell me I had my shirt on backward, I knew I was in over my head.  Nevertheless, this week I graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction from the University of King's College.

It's been a few times now that I've witnessed my friend Patty create beautiful art rather quickly, and unexpectedly, and in front of a room full of people. And every single time there is a moment I have to turn away because I think she is wrecking her own creation.

I was a little girl in glasses who would walk home after school without ever looking up. I knew exactly where I was going. My feet knew the way.

I have a great friend who has been writing a science fiction novel for years, plotting and plodding, like writers do, especially those involved in such a big work. He was visiting recently with his family and I asked him, like fellow writers always do, how his project was coming along.

Last night I mustered all my courage and stood in a line of other people who had mustered all their courage, at a wine and cheese at HarperCollins in downtown Toronto. We were lining up to speak to one of several very kind editors giving two hours of their time to students in the University of King's College Master of Fine Arts program.

The other night I witnessed a lovely collaboration play out at a church in downtown Ottawa. Steve Bell, Canadian Christian music icon, sat on stage with his good friend Malcolm Guite, a poet, priest and singer-songwriter from Cambridge.

Because sometimes one does things backward and higgledy piggledy, I wrote chapter one of my Master of Fine Arts writing project sixth in line. This made sense to me because I wasn't sure how to launch this baby properly, and I may not have actually figured that out yet.