This morning, somewhere in the midst of central Pennsylvania, I experienced heaven.
The streets weren’t made of gold. The church we went to didn’t have enormous pearls for doors – surprise, surprise: it was actually in a gymnasium. There were only a few visible angels (as opposed to a “heavenly host”).
So what was it about this particular Sunday morning that brought heaven to earth?
Continue reading “Heaven is For Real”
This week was a little different here at the blog as I abandoned my normal posts for something new: I gave you a quote on writing, a question, and you guys did the work. Here are some of the questions I asked, as well as some of my favorite responses:
Are artists generally melancholy, dissatisfied people, or is that just a stereotype?
“While there are a variety of reasons that spur individuals toward the creative process, I think that history shows the best and/or most creative have survived through a degree of adversity. That weathering results in a variety of creative drivers that range from neurosis to divine gratitude.” Tor Constantino
“I think there’s something about pulling out your pain and staring it in the face that can make people melancholy, or at least seem melancholy. A lot of people don’t look at their pain directly but deal with in other ways. That said, I want to agree with Janet – and I do to some extent – but I do see a lot of angst among artists, myself included I guess.” Andi Cumbo Continue reading “Written By You”
Each day this week I’m going to post a quote from a book on writing and then a few questions. If you have any thoughts regarding the quote or the questions, leave them in the comments. On Saturday I’ll highlight some of my favorite responses made throughout the week.
“Whenever I went to see him and asked him a question about Buddhism, I had trouble understanding the answer until he said, “You know, like in writing when you…” When he referred to writing, I understood. About three years ago he said to me, “Why do you come to sit meditation? Why don’t you make writing your practice? If you go deep enough in writing, it will take you every place.”
“There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.” (Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”)
Why do you write? Why do you create? What is it about the things you love to do that keeps you going back to them? Continue reading ““If you go deep enough in writing, it will take you everyplace””
Today I’m guest posting over at The House Studio, one of my favorite places and publishers in the world. They’re creating all kinds of quality books. And I’m not just saying that because they’re nice people, or they let me guest post every once in a while. My post over there is entitled “Jesus: Shepherd or Chicken Farmer?”:
About a month ago I bought nine chickens and two guinea fowl. Four of them have black feathers – they are the layers. Five of them are white – those are the boilers. The guinea fowl are just there to eat ticks and, hopefully, live long happy lives.
The kids understand the difference between the layers and the boilers, the practical application being that they have named the black-feathered chickens after their favorite cousins, while the white-feathered variety, destined for our dinner table, remain nameless.
To read the rest, click HERE (this link goes live at 11:04am EST, or if you’re catching this before then, go HERE to check out the cool books they offer).
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If this is your first time here, you may notice that this week I’ve been asking a lot of questions:
“Are artists generally melancholy people, or is that a stereotype?”
“Imitation: The Sincerest Form of…Art?”
“Does the Bible Have a Monopoly on Truth?”
There’s also two of my most read posts of all time: “Confessions From the Guy Standing at the Back of the Church” or “The Opposite of Love is not Hate”
Thanks for stopping by.
“Early in our corruption we are taught that fiction is not true. Too many people apologize when they are caught enjoying a book of fiction; they are afraid that it will be considered a waste of time, and that they ought to be reading a biography or a book of information on how to pot plants. Is Jane Eyre not true? Did Conrad, turning to the writing of fiction in his sixties, not search there for truth? Was Melville, writing about the sea and the great conflict between a man and a whale, not delving for a deeper truth than we can find in any number of “how to” books?”
– Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water
What truths have you learned from books or movies or television shows?
Each day this week I’m going to post a quote from a book on writing and then a few questions. If you have any thoughts regarding the quote or the questions, leave them in the comments. On Saturday I’ll highlight some of my favorite responses made throughout the week.
“Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev…Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E.M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, ‘Nobody’s.’ In his youth, he has not yet discovered that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role…” (Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life)
What do you think about imitation? A helpful tool for aspiring artists? A poor excuse for plagiarism? Which writers or artists or musicians do you like to learn from?
