Crossword-Solution: ACCOLADE 8 letters, 60 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 13

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

All of us, some frequently, feel undervalued and unseen. Yet, our deepest pains are lessened in that moment of recognition that Jesus... gets it. That his own feet have walked through this very pain. May we stretch to be like him, and live for his accolade alone, his face only before us. For soon, as Scripture promises, we will be face to face." from "The Bare Branch" p.43

We were perfectly placed, perfectly disposed to one another. Our pieces fit so well together, not in the way that puzzle pieces are carved to click, but in a clumsier, more accidental way; we were a city skyline — unplanned architectural mastery. Designed by the heavens, and you called me your angel — even when I was undeserving of that accolade. You’d call yourself the devil and I’d feel betrayed. Because for me, we were the same, either two sinners or two saints.