Journaling
A journal of journeys
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Are Your Stories Worth Telling?
If someone were to ask you about your life story, where would you start? Would you start from today and look back? Or would you start at your beginning, from when you were born? Would you begin explaining relationships? Your parents? The place where you grew up? Teachers? Friends? Would you want to talk about your childhood and adolescence? Or have the years since high school and college proved more interesting? Would adult years that perhaps include a spouse and children emerge as most significant? Or maybe you would want to tell about your career, or people you have met that have made a difference in your life? What about…
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Writing Can Help Make Sense of Your Story
You want your life to count for something. You want your experiences to benefit somebody besides you. You want to know before you die that it makes a difference that you lived. You need to write down some of your own story footnotes. You need to leave a trail. You need to write to hear yourself think. Your problem is my problem too. People used to write letters. Letters kept track of some of the important events in life. Letters said, “I’m thinking of you and I want you to know what’s going on in my life.” But now, few people write letters. And few people make prints from the…
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Rescuing Good Memories of People Who Hurt Us Takes Time
Hurting people hurt people. It occurs to me as I sit on a worn sofa looking out the picture window that frames the mountain beyond the towering Ponderosa pines, it is impossible for me to see the mountain where I am sitting now. I can see the mountain across the road, but not the mountain our cabin is built on. The Cuchara Valley is hemmed in by smaller mountains at the base of the Spanish Peaks––two majestic mountains that break the monotony of the plains of southeastern Colorado. In the same way that I cannot see the mountain where I find myself located at the moment––elevation 8450’––it takes time and…
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Why Is Easter a Good Time to Think about the Jews?
Jesus is who Easter is about. Not rabbits, chicks, and eggs. Jesus was a Jew. And Easter is when Christians think about Jesus even more than they remember him at Christmas. Jesus is who Passover is about, but you have to read both the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible to know why. The nation of Jews, the race and the religious people known as Israel, whose heritage traced back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, rejected Jesus as their Messiah (Savior) during the time when Jesus came in person to offer himself as atonement for the entire world’s sin. Which incidentally, was during Passover. To this day,…
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The Gift of Reading: a Booklist
A little notebook gifted to me imposed brief entries, a few sentences to describe the books I had read at the time. When I ran across that neglected diary of sorts, I found just enough written to make me want to read many of these books again. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Francis Bacon Gift from the Sea © 1955, Anne Morrow Lindbergh––A perennial favorite, I try to read this book once a year. I have given away so many copies that have then become a favorite of my recipients. Contains treasured insights for various stages of…
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A Time to Thrive
The days are getting shorter by the minute. From September 21 until the winter solstice, the days get shorter. Depending on a location’s latitude (how far north of the equator), daylight slips away at the rate of 3 minutes a day. Days seem to go faster, don’t they? Turning the calendar page in October brings both a sigh and a lament.
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Blogging is like fishing
While standing on the shore of tiny Blue Lake near Cuchara, Colorado, casting until my right shoulder screamed at me to quit, I thought how much blogging is like fishing. I want to catch fish. Hmm, readers. I am willing to work at catching fish. Uh, readers. I keep baiting the hook. Trying to figure out what fish will bite. Umm, readers will read.