If you have ever walked into a bookstore and spotted a book you hoped to write someday, raise your hand.
If you're a writer yourself, don't bother.
It probably happens to you all the time, as it does to me.
It just happened to me last Monday.
I walked in the store and was greeted by "Of These Emblems: Coming Closer to Christ through the Sacrament" — a new collection from Covenant Communications featuring essays by S. Michael Wilcox, Joy Saunders Lundberg and several others.
But in my case, it was more than a "hoped to write someday" kind of moment. I had actually filled a couple of folders with notes, had done research and was toying with various titles. (I was leaning toward "Weekly Bread" or "Bread of the Angels" — the English version of the carol "Panis Angelicus."
I don't know what insights abound in the new Covenant book. I didn't have the heart to look on Monday.
But in my book, I planned to talk about Jesus turning water into wine in the New Testament, then in a modern revelation about the sacrament, turning the wine back into water.
I planned to talk about Jesus multiplying the loaves in the Bible, then multiplying them again and again each week today as people around the world partake of the sacrament.
I was going to say that God always chooses something plentiful to make holy — like holy water, holy bread or holy ground. For a just and merciful God, making holy caviar, say, or holy plutonium wouldn't make much sense.
I'd even bought several books about the sacrament in other faiths to trace the path of the ritual through history.
I've always liked the fact the sacrament song is one number in a church service that the choir or soloist never gets to sing. It must be sung by everyone. The song, as much as the prayers, becomes a unified pledge.
The sacrament song may be the one moment where the Saints come closest to being one in spirit.
I don't know if any of those thoughts appear in the pages of "Of These Emblems." Given the hearts and minds of people like Brent L. Top, E. Douglas Clark, Toni Sorenson and the others who appear there, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't cover just about all of the bases.
As for me, I'm left to quote author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"Hi-ho. So it goes."
At least now I'll have an answer for my wife.
When I'm planning to do a book and begin to balk at all the work ahead she has a habit of saying, "If you don't write the book, Jerry, who will?"
Now I have an answer.
Brent Top, Wilcox and a full roster of others.
Jerry Johnston is a Deseret News staff writer. "New Harmony" appears weekly in Mormon Times.
e-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com