Seven years ago, when I started the blog, I wrote for myself. I wrote for the precious hour during naptime when I could think for a few minutes on my own. I wrote to think out loud, and I wrote to remember. I wrote to remember that I could think. Why did I write about […]
"Any fool can choose the boy who sends her heart into a flurry. But there's a big deep divide between desire and devotion. You better not choose the boy who makes you dizzy." ~ Julie Cantrell, Into the Free
I am reading The Beautiful Fight, by Gary Thomas. I am struck by the point of this chapter I am reading - the call to the Divine Experience. Thomas argues - or rather he discusses, since he specifically says we are called to not argue - that theology and experience are not polarized. […]
There is something about the pace of letter writing that's a welcome antidote to the speed of modern life. By their very nature, letters allow for more consideration of the words and thoughts that someone is offering you, in part because they prevent interruption. Perhaps best of all is their *keeping* quality. Elizabeth Berg, Tapestry […]
Children are not aware of limitations. They just figure that if there's something they don't know, it's because they haven't learned it yet. "Why's the sun round?" "Because there's a big fire at the center, and as it moves outward, it cools equally." "Why?" "Because heat cools at a standard rate." "Why?" "Uh… because…" Children […]
It is our tradition to pass on some words of wisdom about how to have a happy marriage. I know a lot of people say things about don't go to bed angry, start and end each day with a kiss, be together but also spend some time apart, that sort of thing. For me, […]
"What does it feel like to be a mother?" Quiet, and then Joni says, "You know those doors where you go in and you can't come out?" "What doors can you go in and not come out?" Renie asks. "They're in mousetraps." "Being a mother feels like being in a mousetrap?" […]
Already I've seen that when you're pulled away from your normal routine, it's as though air and sunlight come into your brain and do a little housecleaning. A lifting up of what's been practically rusted into place to reveal something else, a thing that makes you understand the origin of the phrase 'new and exciting', […]
"I have a problem with ageism, overt and especially covert. My feeling about a person's age is that it's a serving suggestion. It's up to you what you do with it: take it as offered, modify it, or ignore it all together." ~ Cece in Tapestry of Fortunes, by Elizabeth Berg
"Yoga is not exercise. It is a thinly disguised competition where people are judged on their personalized mats and cute yoga outfits and ability to act like a heron or the letter Q." - Renie, in Tapestry of Fortunes, Elizabeth Berg (I do happen to believe yoga is exercise. And I also happened to find […]
In real life, get out of the way when a person with a gun is running down the street. In your writing life, step in front of his path, let him shoot you in the heart. What you fear, if you turn toward it, will give your writing teeth. ~ Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from […]
"Loving well, stepping over hurt, laying aside self and desires, draws on more of our interior resources than investing in a career, a skill, a personal pursuit. And yet, there are no promotions. No public status. No guarantees." ~ Ann Voskamp
"Whole hearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect […]
Aeschylus writes - "In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." Awful grace of God. How can I be described as awful? I supposed it is this grace that allows me to survive, […]
"Michael, what if I say to myself, I'm ready, I want to have a whole new wonderful relationship, and then it never happens?" "So what? So then you're back to square one. And you're there now anyway." - Must Love Dogs
"Our conversations are silly -- about nothing, really, less and less consequential. But they are comforting to both of us, I know. They remind me of what we talk about before we go to sleep, any of us, the lazy, low-voiced assurances we offer each other: Did you turn out the lights? Put the […]
"In polite company, I know, writing in books is frowned upon, even considered vandalism. For others, it's a form of veneration, with each reader's marginal scrawlings becoming part of an ongoing conversation with the author. I'm obviously an advocate of the second camp. There are a couple of books on my shelves that are held […]
"There is a value and comfort in being here and understanding what matters most is only who you were to someone else." - Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep
[This is the] advice my father used to give to my sister and me as we were preparing to go out on a date. "Turn. Let me see you," he would say, approvingly. "You look beautiful." Then he would add the words he always said before we went out -- words that every daughter […]
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these." -George Washington Carver
