November 2014 – My Writing Life

Today is Thanksgiving. It’s a down day for us because we postpone the big feast until Saturday so all of our married kids can join us. Today is a mixed-up, random kind of day–my favorite kind. A day of bear-naps, and basketball watching and diving into the Christmas greenery. A day of intersection for the Nativity sets and the pumpkins. Christmas music blaring on Pandora.

I see parallels to this kind of a day to my writing process. I can’t neatly and succinctly cram creativity into its own special corner. I prepare, rest, exercise, eat, argue, console, forgive, clean one room, mess up another. In my mind, Baby Jesus lurks even as the ghost of my maternal grandmother stays watch in my kitchen over the stuffing preparations.

I grow weary of purists who can’t mix their Christmas shopping with their gratitude, who want me to wait until December 26th to sing about pregnant Mary. Advent belongs to me because it was a gift from a Person who has the right to give me whatever gift He wants. It’s my Advent and I’ll watch a John Travolta movie if I want to. Pumpkin pie and peppermint ice cream are holding hands in my freezer just fine.

It’s called life. A Writing Life. A life that each day rises with a sun that owes everything to our Christmas Story which is the source of all Thanksgiving. No segue needed.

Every Community Has a Story

Recently, I had the privilege of writing one woman’s story for our community’s “Facing Project,” which was borne out of a program designed to give a “hand up” to some of our more hidden citizens who suffer from poverty and the many problems which go hand-in-hand with that. Violence, addictions, abuse, hunger, gaps in education, brokenness in relationships…these are a few of those problems.

The woman whose story was entrusted to me told a story which was difficult to hear, difficult to write. Several of our community’s “Facing” stories will be read at a fundraiser for our local Circles Out of Poverty Program. We will all be sitting around a a table with a crisp table cloth, enjoying gourmet coffee and petite desserts in the month of Thankfulness and girth and all things pumpkin, as some of our high school students read these stories, all written in the first-person in order to emphasize the immediacy.

Here is the link to the national Facing Project:

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