“All work is honorable.” – Bill MacKillop During my college years, I prepared to go to work at the midnight hour while my roommates prepared for bed by climbing under their warm blankets and turning off the light. Sunday through Thursday evenings, I packed up supplies for my graveyard shift job and left…
We went to a lovely wedding this weekend and witnessed a young couple who are madly in love commit to each other for a lifetime. When my husband and I made the same promise 31 years ago, we were in perfect health, filled with energy and the promise of a new and exciting future together….
“Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace, it shouldn’t be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice.” Corazon Aquino It’s happened to me twice in the past year. Two times in one year when all the years before have included…
My faculty mentor in my writing program wants me to turn two of my fictional characters into stronger antagonists. She feels they’re not quite causing enough trouble in their current form. The purpose of an antagonist is to prevent your main character from reaching their goal. The consensus is that all stories must have an…
“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.” – Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.) You learned later in life to utter that prayer for yourself and others, the one that pops up regularly in your mind: “Lord, give me the words – and the silences.” Where did that prayer come from? You know where it came…
It’s Father’s Day, and I’m watching as all the tributes to wonderful Dads fill the Facebook world. I expected them, and celebrate with my friends whose dads passed down remarkable legacies. But some of us had very broken dads, and we inherited a different kind of legacy. Part of my legacy is that, thanks to…
I recently had the chance to sit in on a workshop called “Loving Our Neighbors and Enemies: Writing toward Reconciliation,” led by the dynamic author and speaker Leslie Leyland Fields. Her balanced approach to addressing forgiveness within the context of broken relationships gave me an enthusiasm to read her book. Leslie is the author of…
I’m grateful for all the youth in our lives these days. Not my youth, of course (which packed up and headed for warmer territory many years ago), but the youth of our many young friends, my sons, and their friends who all color our lives and bring a vibrancy that an aging couple can’t help…
At lunch recently a co-worker shared that growing up, her father owned a funeral home in a small Tennessee town; she and her siblings were all part of the business. They had a dark comedic side that they brought to the work, like getting a chuckle when their favorite flower arrangement arrived complete with a…
I read the blogs of friends who are in the midst of raising families and one friend who blogs (beautifully and deliciously!) about food. I recall my domestic days that seem in the distant past, those moments of making a family feel safe and loved. But now my sons have sprung, flown the coop, left…