How do we promote civil discourse in our contentious society? One way is by recognizing that it’s complicated – civil discourse that is. One of the Presentations I attended at the Festival of Faith and Writing was a presentation by Marilyn McEntyre, Writing Through a Fog of Fear: Finding Life-Giving Words in an Alarming Time. […]
Read More
Somehow over the years, I’ve lost some of my delight in words. Gratefully now, I’m working on rediscovering the beauty of words. History with Words In high school, I used to play with words, at times seeing how many pages of description I could write for something familiar. I mean, how many ways can you […]
Read More
Recently, as part of the Festival of Faith and Writing, I attended a presentation by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter entitled, Rejection, Revision, Repetition: Lessons Learned from an Unpublished Novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It was precisely what I needed to hear. There were so many ways that L’Engle’s story was helpful. Below are my lessons from Madeleine […]
Read More
Chances are you are familiar with the stereotypical faces of Alzheimer’s – empty gaze, lack of recognition of friends and family, incontinence. But there are so many more faces of Alzheimer’s, each as unique as the person behind the face. Personal Experience with Alzheimer’s In my twelve years as chaplain at a retirement community, I […]
Read More
This year, Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same day, February 14. What do they have in common? Hearts and ashes? Both celebrate love! What greater love is there than the love of God who chose to become a man so that we would have a God who knows what it is to […]
Read More
The recent civil war controversy over Nikki Haley’s response to the question about the cause of the Civil War has brought back memories of Stillwell Junior High School and my history teacher William Nicholas. When Mr. Nicholas asked us what caused the Civil War, our response was “Slavery, duh.” “Are you sure?” he questioned back, […]
Read More
This past week I read the Facebook post by Fr. James Martin about the passing of his friend and mentor, Sr. Martha Buser. I have never met Sr. Martha (nor have I met Fr. James Martin though I follow him on X, aka Twitter) but I was inspired by her, in particular by what she […]
Read More
Most writers are aware of the axiom – write what you know. That certainly is the case for character development. When we start out, we tend to create characters that are like us. That might work for the first or second book, but eventually it gets to be boring and repetitious. We need to create […]
Read More
Are you ready to roll out the holly, start the holiday baking, trim the tree and listen to endless Christmas music? Why not start with a collection of Christmas stories? My Christmas book is now available for pre-order. If you love Christmas and stories (and who doesn’t?), you will love Christmas in Cascade Falls, small […]
Read More
Have you ever wondered why dog is God spelled backwards? Was it some random fluke of the English language? Or one of God’s happy coincidences? I like to think the latter. Seamus Last week our dog, Seamus, was put to sleep after an aggressive form of lymphoma ravaged his body. No longer able to gulp […]
Read More
