February 2012
30 posts
commandments.
libraryland:
Henry Miller’s Writing Commandments
youmightfindyourself:
Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
When you can’t create you can work.
Cement a...
5 tags
death and all his friends: a prayer.
“Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.“
Oh God, we are dust. We are dust that you have stirred up, made to dance, made to sing, made to love. But Lord, we are dust. We have fallen short of the glory You made us to be. We have not loved as You loved us. We have indulged in sadness, have eaten our fill of bitterness, satiated ourselves with apathy...
ashes.
Lent is upon us.
Let us learn to die.
Let us learn to die. Each day.
Let us learn to die.
“We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns...”
– Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (via libraryland)
maybes.
Maybe redemption isn’t rebuilding, but a breaking of what was in order to make room for something more beautiful.
Maybe forgiveness is letting go of any hope of a better past.
And maybe grace is the quiet understanding that all of us are messes.
And maybe love is the even quieter covenant to never give up, however messy it gets.
2 tags
winter winds.
This is all shadow-play.
We consider ourselves
first
last
criminals
saints
before all the rest.
We must look through our irises,
clouded
overcast
another storm is brewing behind my
empty tree-limb ribs.
This is supposed to be spring.
This is supposed to be spring.
Damnit, this is supposed to be spring.
Call me a coward,
but I cannot climb
over this debris.
But...
Just keep your head above...
jhwaholmquist:
You’ve gotta swim,
Swim for your life.
Swim for the music that saves you when you’re not so sure you’ll survive..
You gotta swim,
And swim when it hurts.
The whole world is watching, you haven’t come this far to fall off the earth
The currents will pull you,
Away from your love.
Just keep your head above..
My theme song right now.
stranger.
That wasn’t me. That wasn’t this child who used to fear jumping off rocks, feared scrapped knees and black eyes. That wasn’t the kind of person I know I am to be. How could it be? How could the air become so thin all the sudden? How could these steady feet not know how to stand? How could that same one be here and there and then apart and then a part of my irregular beating heart?
How can one...
glow.
The past two days, I’ve found myself sitting in front of these library windows before 8am. I have work to do, and things to write, and ideas to think. But first, I have a chance, here in this moment, to be still. To know that God is God, and I am not. To see a little glimpse of all that He places in front of His children to delight them, to encourage them, to bolster them, to challenge...
happy.
Today was just a good day. It was the kind of day you never expect, and when you experience it, the meaning of “gift” seems more real to you than it was before.
Yesterday was a day of refilling - a midweek sabbath that was deeply necessary. Today, I returned to the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, the manual labor of the mind, the sweat of pushing myself beyond what I believe I...
“[We do not say ourselves like that in poems.]
We say ourselves in syllables...”
– Wallace Stevens, from “The Creations of Sound” (via the-final-sentence)
After reading Derrida all morning, this makes complete sense. Which is either a wonderful sign or a very disturbing one. Considering that I just internally debated the usage of the word “sign”, I’m leaning...
manna.
I have a mentor who reminds me, often, that God provides enough manna for each day. It was an image that came to him early in our relationship, and has been a continual thread throughout these past four years. I can always rely on George to remind me of God’s provision, even as I fail to see the abundance around me.
Yesterday was a hard day. For a million reasons. I saw no manna, and I...
break.
To write means to break.
And I cannot break anymore. I have nothing else to break apart. I have set all the kindling I have on fire and now I am shaking from the cold, from the fear, from the sadness, from the unknowns. I am sitting at the empty hearth of a heart that has long since hidden it’s face from me.
I do not know how to return. I do not know if there is a way to return, to...
January 2012
64 posts
inspired.
I cannot even say how much my grandmother inspires, and encourages me. As someone who has lived through so much pain and sorrow and suffering - 90 years of hardship - she is still the most faithful, joyful, patient, and honest woman I’ve ever met.
She has survived so much, yet has never been a victim.
Being born in 1922.
The Great Depression.
Working the fruit canning lines as a...
yet.
It’s another one of those lonely night, where I feel an absence next to me.
When my neck strains because it has no support when watching TV, I think of you.
When I’m cold, but not cold enough for a blanket, I think of you.
When I make frozen pizza and only want half, I think of you.
When all I need is a kiss on the forehead to make it all better, I think of you.
It’s an...
intrinsic.
A number of times this week people asked me how I deal with being so involved, and having so many leadership positions. My first answer, which is deeply true, is, “By the Grace of God”. Really, that’s the truest answer.
There is, though, another answer that comes to mind. I don’t always share it, because I want to encourage leadership potential in people and not divulge...
marble.
Tonight, I wrote for the first time in two years.
This is not to say that I have not typed words onto pages or scrawling in notebooks or even told long, sometimes even good stories. This is not to say that.
But until tonight, I had not hurt like I had before. A little over two years ago, I discovered the genre that will be my home, the place of creative non-fiction where truth-telling and...
offices.
Into offices, I have spoken. Echos of me, reverberating questions that are release from between the cracks in my rib cage and my fingers broken from holding on to these questions for too long.
Do you know what you mean to me? Do you know that you are my heros, my understanding of grace, that you have shown me the face of God in the way you have allowed me to speak? Do you know what you have done...
hospitality.
Come in. Come closer. Tell me your secrets, your stories, your
mind if I interrupt you?
mind if I say this biglongwordthatyoudontknowbuttrytofollow?
mind if I invite you to pretend that we both have bigger lives than we do?
Coffee. Tea. Milk. Water. Cookies. Anything. This is yours.
do you see these lines on my hands?
they trace out my callings, my dreams - you’ll never be able to...
this is just to say
bechanged:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
w c williams
invisibleforeigner asked: Duke. :) I'm taking a year off but I don't know what I'm doing yet. Hopefully I can just get a job that pays decently well while I take the GRE and apply to div schools next year.
invisibleforeigner asked: I've heard great things about the program from quite a few people, but I don't think I've met anyone in person who's done it. Otherwise I'd definitely put you in touch with them. :)
invisibleforeigner asked: Hi! I seem to recall that you said you wanted to do the Episcopal internship in Chapel Hill next year. Where do you go to school?
“My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell...”
– Telling Secrets, by Frederick Buechner
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
– Zelda Fitzgerald (via misswallflower)
