Four years ago, a still unknown someone gifted me a writer’s retreat at Laity Lodge in the Texas Hill Country. I got the call while sitting outside at a nursing home with my mom who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor following a fall. The only workshop still open was a poetry […]
Still Saturday: Surrender
The power of the Holy Spirit is life; it is like breath in our lungs. It is the Spirit of God, not just hovering over the waters and the deep, but now, at our behest and invitation, infused into our very being and dwelling within us. We cannot see him, but if we’re paying […]
Still Saturday: Mute
Mute Must we use words For everything? Can there not be A silent, flaming Leap of heart Toward Thee? ~Elizabeth B. Rooney as found in At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time, compiled by Sarah Arthur In the stillness, Sandy Welcome to the Still Saturday Community where we […]
When I Was No Writer And My Words Were Poo
“I like good strong words that mean something.” ~Jo March (Little Women) I chinned the rusty barrel near the hem of our woods. The carbon petals curled and separated. The ashes fluttered high and melted into the atmosphere. Cremation complete. The weekly newspaper over in the next county had rejected my fiction story—the […]
Still Saturday: Clear Out and Cultivate
“If we are going to live appropriately in the creation we must keep the Sabbath. We must stop running around long enough to see what he has done and is doing. We must shut up long enough to hear what he has said and is saying. All our ancestors agree that without silence and […]
Still Saturday: In This Moment
“The present moment is all that is real. The past is gone. The future is not yet. We remember the past and anticipate the future, but we always do so in the present. “Reality is always now. And the single most important aspect of reality is that God is present in it every moment. To […]
Dreaming With Darwish: Nurture Hope
The poet Mahmoud Darwish believed there needed to be a time gap between an event and the writing about it. My thoughts about this latest dare are like “cotton ginned by the wind.” Maybe I need a wider gap. I’ve sat most of this past week in “A State of Siege,” a long text […]
Still Saturday: Key Moments
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness, touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. Listening to Your […]
Still Saturday: Glimpses of Glory
One of the great gifts of God is the wonder and diversity of the world that is around us. From the book in your hands to the sky above you, the physical world invites amazement. In Romans 1 Paul says that we are without excuse precisely because of the glory that shines forth from everything […]
Dream Poem #4: Dreaming With Darwish
Well, things have been a bit quiet around here (the blog) for several weeks, and I don’t know where the summer has gone. My daughter is still displaced and dealing with insurance after her house fire. We’ve been working slowly on some house projects, and there have been a few trips out of town, […]
