I’m saying that this isn’t a lecture where an expert is advising you. I’m saying this is a lecture of someone saying “All of life is at your fingertips. Go for it. Don’t settle for less.”
Losing My Religion Pt 2
I get it that people think that Christianity is like any other religion, or that it is only a religion. It is that—a religion.
Losing My Religion Pt 1
People lie. Societies crumble. Businesses fail. Political parties speak one thing but pursue an opposite agenda. These are our gods, and they are proved not to be so much lies as they are simply untrustworthy—literally not worthy of our trust. Not worthy of us.
Three Is the Magic Number
Three is the magic number. Our third annual Word Jazz festival takes place at Boxley’s, a jazz club in North…
The Communion of the Saints
What kind of people participate in the communion of the saints?
The Writing Finger Having Mov’d Writes On
The art of building the story through the use of counters, blanks, and empty spaces gives room for the story to build and to breathe.
People of the Book
It’s odd how most of us only know what’s between page 1, far behind us, and page yet-to-be-determined, perhaps only a little ways before us, where our present life concludes and the book closes with a final snap.
Book Review: Slavery by Another Name
Much of the success of the South around the turn of the last century can be traced to rise of industry centered in Birmingham, Alabama and in the cotton industry before the arrival of the boll weevil; this book helps explain how these riches were accumulated and who benefited.
Beauty and Ashes
I do not know if you can admit you’ve lived through that time, where beauty has changed to ashes. Often there is no safe place to have that discussion because life demands that you act as if life holds only beauty. There are chores and tasks to take care of. There are family members to support. Life goes on like a train, and there is never a cord to pull to say “Stop!” Whether you speak out or not—life goes on.
Sunday Words, Monday Deeds
I suspect that some of you are in the same boat with me. Thinking, “Lord, are you really calling me?” Because the awful reality is dawning that he is asking us to follow—to really follow – him.
Writing Exercises
So Nancy Kress gave us a set of writing exercises. One: Write a scene using only dialog. It’s an argument…
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
There is a great clip on YouTube, where Bob Newhart is a therapist who attempts to help a lady with…
Model Garage
We will always need that sense of being connected and that sense of knowing that someone sees us, recognizes us, and finds us valuable.
Acts of Faith
Have you ever walked into a movie halfway and then spent the rest of the movie trying to figure out what it all means? It makes for a challenging viewing experience—you don’t really know the characters, and you have to guess why people do what they do
Losing Faith
Have you ever done all the right things, checked all the boxes, filled out all the forms, signed on the dotted line—and still experienced disaster?
Telling
Maybe it’s that we’re human, but we can all tell our story. Not all of us can tell it with the same degree of passion or generate the same level of interest, but we can usually describe an event and what it meant to us.
Sometimes the Good Guys Win
How come I can want to do the right thing and be, inside myself, a good person, but both the outside and the inside are broken? How can the universe display such beauty and at the same time such brutality?
The Right Book Is the Wrong Book
One of the best books I’ve read so far on writing has been one to say you’re probably a crummy writer and you should stay far away from the publishing world.
Beyond the Bars
I meet with a group of writers every Monday night, and we usually have a short-story competition: we get a…
Surfing the Avalanche
This week think about the ways you are avoiding help and change. Maybe you think you can do it alone, or maybe you think you must. I can’t convince you outright, I think, to step out. If you’re convinced of your own hopelessness, then what are my words going to do to change that? But if there’s the slightest hint of light, the weakest desire for change, I urge you to find a group who will love you unconditionally and support you without shame.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Cooking Diary
In which the ennui of existence translates to a series of uninspired yet necessary meals.