There is a hollow growing inside with each turn of page. I’m reading the first five essays in The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, the current High Calling Blogs book club selection. You might think the hollow I refer to is a gnawing hunger,…
My heart broke this summer. Like the fairy tale, I had a great fall, and there’s no putting me back together again. You see, I met some kids whose eyes reached in and grabbed hold of my heart. These were old souls staring out from young bodies. They were mere…
It is rare for an idea to come without baggage. We have a lifetime of experiences through which we’ve formed opinions that are difficult to disconnect from (remember the Curse of Knowledge?). When I mention the words Christian and Christianity to someone who does not know Jesus, often there is…
An effective communication book I once read described good conversation as the tossing of a ball between two (or more) people: I say something (tossing the ball to you); you say something (tossing the ball to me); and on it goes. The exchange keeps both parties involved and connected. In…
My simple gets trampled on. A lot. By me, myself, and I—and the many words I can’t seem to part with. It’s buried by my inability to be concise. Authors—and brothers—Chip and Dan Heath give some great excavating advice in their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and…
Over at High Calling Blogs, we just wrapped a book club for Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. The book’s content and the participants’ discussions provided plenty to mull over, including the final challenge by Cameron to develop your own writing contract….
Whenever I finish a meaningful book, I want to plant a stake in the ground or stack some stones of remembrance to mark what I’ve learned and make it stick. I’m worried the new ideas will slip away if I don’t keep them tied down or in plain sight. These…
Virginia Woolf declared that all a woman needs to write is some money and a room of her own. The mental and financial freedom she was likely referring to—in addition to an actual place—has faded over the years as we writers project into this our own vision of the perfect…
This past Friday (July 2) was the 183rd day of 2010. What’s so special about that day? Well, it marks the halfway point of the year, with 182 days behind us and 182 days to go. Lots of things have happened in the first half, but what hasn’t happened is…
Back when I first played about with words and phrases and pages and poems, I harbored it in secrecy. I wouldn’t dare speak it aloud or be so careless as to leave my journal unprotected. I did this because I knew THEY were out there—ready to pounce on my far-fetched…
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