Ready to Make Friends with Poetry? ⟶
I met Sophfronia Scott at the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids April 2018. I’d admired her writing work from afar, particularly an essay in Ruminate magazine about dancing in her kitchen. I knew she’d be speaking at the Festival and scanned the meeting places, looking for her beautiful dreadlocks and beaming smile. I…
I began following Deidra Riggs online way back in 2012; I enjoyed her honesty, her wisdom and her down-to-earth take on spiritual issues. We finally met in person at the 2014 Faith and Culture Writer’s Conference in Oregon and we’ve continued the conversation on and off line since. I so appreciate her voice in the…
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. Isaiah 46:4 NIV Two weeks ago I took my first ever trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to attend the…
I am still basking in the afterglow of a rich and rewarding five days at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Michigan. (Thank you, Grand Rapids, snow and all.) I am exhausted and beyond tired. My brain is packed, my spirit is full to overflowing and my body has been existing…
“Only in those moments of vivid experience that made her come alive was she at home in her own country.” –Marianne in Green Dolphin Country, Elizabeth Goudge, Hodder & Stoughton, 1944 Friend T and I were chatting on Instagram the other day about my favorite author (see above). There’s no writer I can recall…
“Harbor me in the eye of the storm I’m holding on to the love you swore.” -John Mark McMillan, Love You Swore The other day on Instagram I asked: “How is it we never wonder why good things happen to good people? Or why good things happen to bad people?” My reflections were a version…
“A book begins with falling in love. You lose your heart to a place, a house, an avenue of trees, or with a character who walks in and takes sudden and complete possession of you. Imagination glows, and there is the seed of your book.” -Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow, 1974 Squeezed into…
Where have you been? Out of town like those who flee our chilled clime and metallic skies? Elsewhere, warming up your voice to herald today’s sunrise with your song? I welcome your morning melody making its way to my ears, stirring memories of other songs on sullen, silver days when your music was my only…
Every year at Christmas our kids get my husband and I a jigsaw puzzle. This year Santa pitched in and we actually ended up with three puzzles–birds, the beach and kites–our three favorite things. A great Friday night date for my husband and I is to build a fire, turn on the music and puzzle away….a simple, quiet joy…
“So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.” Romans 12:5, The Message Bible…