Writing

This piece landed in my inbox today. I subsribe to a daily meditation from the Henri Nouwen Society. There are a couple of week's worth still waiting to be read. But in the midst of sermon-writing-procrastination, I read today's.

Writing to Save the Day

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.

In the past three months, there have been more days than I'd like to admit that needed "redeeming" through writing. I couldn't bring myself to sit down at the keyboard and type, or open my journal and put pen to paper. I have lists of blog-post titles and themes written on various to-do lists, in my planner, in random notebooks. I am hopeful I'll get to them.

For now, it's time to return to some preaching preparation. It's the Fourth Sunday of Easter tomorrow, which means Good Shepherd Sunday. It's also Malaria Sunday (World Malaria Day was last Wednesday) and the ELCA has stated a goal of raising $200,000 to begin the campaign's work in Liberia. At least the check's written, even the sermon isn't.

For blogging's sake

Yep, I've done it again, as I guess I do have a tendency to be an all-or-nothing kind of blogger.

It's November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). And while I have absolutely no intentions of doing THAT again any time soon, I did sign up for its cousin: NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. The theme for this month is blogging for blogging's sake. And that's about all this post is going to amount to. We actually watched a movie tonight, and now I'm feeling rather tired. Think I'll head to bed!

The Postcard Project

A new month, a new project (since my last project didn't actually turn out as well as planned - I did TAKE the picture that should have been posted on Friday, August 12th, but clearly didn't manage to POST it).
This next project has several sources of inspiration: Katy, at the Non-Consumer Advocate has a 52 Weeks, 52 Letters project going this year - writing one letter every week. And Tammy, at Rowdy Kittens has been doing a Postcard Project since mid-August. Both have served as reminders to do something I love to do anyway: put pen to paper and send people REAL mail, that can be touched and stuck to the fridge or bulletin board. One of the best parts, though, is that this project is going to cost me very little money. In fact, I'd bet good money that I could send a postcard a day through the end of the year and never have to buy a postcard to make it happen. I've got something of a collection going... (stamps may require purchase, though several of the postcards I have were previously stamped - and some even addressed to folks who have long since moved. Mostly, I need to stock up on those pesky 1, 2 and 5 cent stamps).
SO - don't be surprised if some random postcard shows up in your mailbox. I've got 'em from the 1994 spring break mission trip to Jamaica, from my 1993 sojourn in Norway with a stop in Copenhagen, a 1997 visit to London, and more recent trips to a Benedictine monastery in Idaho, and several other exotic locales. Not to mention all the artsy fartsy postcards I have accumulated along the way.
Ah, how I love me a project...

It's still Saturday somewhere...

Well, so much for writing every day in May - technically speaking, I didn't even make it through the first week. But, I'm still up, despite the fact that I'm now into early Sunday morning. My sermon is kicking my butt.
In reading the gospel text for tomorrow, Luke 24:13-35 over and over, I realized that I could likely do an introduction (for some, hopefully, a re-introduction) of Vibrant Faith Ministries (formerly the Youth & Family Institute) four keys to nurturing faith in the home and congregation:
1. caring conversations
2. devotions
3. service
4. rituals and traditions

It's still not quite done, though I'm getting tired enough to head to bed and try to get up early to put the finishing touches on it.
Good thing tomorrow's Mother's Day - I am definitely going to need a nap!

I'm back. I think.

I've been asbent from Unseen Endings for awhile. For several reasons. Perhaps I'll get into those later. For now, I'm back. I think. There's a lot I've been meaning to say, and I plan eventually to get around to saying at least a fraction of it. But for now, go read this post. Amazing. It might get a mention in my Good Friday meditations, if I can figure out just where to put it and how... I'll let you know.

Another Round of NaBloPoMo

News Flash: I am WAY better at getting things done when I have a deadline that needs meeting. Case in point: I did actually manage to write a blog post EVERY SINGLE DAY in December. Even Christmas Eve. Even New Year's Eve. I mean really... was January THAT much more complicated? Not at all - but since I hadn't made the commitment to post something (anything!) every day, very clearly I didn't. Well, enough of that. I'm going for another round of a blog post a day for a month (and yes, I am a little thankful it's a 28 day month). I figure I'm walking proof that if you want something done, you should ask a busy person to do it. I picked up a second job last week (my hours at church have been cut - officially, following yesterday's annual meeting of the congregation - back to half time). I'm an administrative helper, of sorts. Lots of filing, cleaning out files, putting new files together, playing with labels, etc. It's a temporary part-time gig, but at this point any help at all is, well, HELP, when it comes to our household finances. More on that another day. I do have a fun thing to share. We had a congregational sledding night on Saturday night, from 7:30-9pm, by the light of a full moon. There were about 30 participants ranging in age from 4 - 75 years old sledding, and enjoying hot chocolate and tasty treats. Here's a video of Grant coming down the hill (taken with my Christmas present FlipShare video recorder). By the end of the night he was covered in snow, cold, and incredibly happy. Not bad. Happy February!

So, it's been a while...

I know, I've been absent from the blogosphere for an uncharacteristically long time. Somehow life has managed to fill in all the gaps of time I would normally have used to write... I picked up a second job this week, as the congregational spending plan the church council will be recommending at this Sunday's annual meeting includes a reduction in my hours - back to half-time from three-quarter time. Of course this means a reduction in pay as well, though I haven't quite figured out how to reduce the amount of work that needs to get done. I'm not sure there's a way for me to win here, without first looking like I'm not doing my job. I remain hopeful that members of the congregation will step into leadership and team-member roles (since it's not all MY job in the first place) for the sake of the ministries to which we've been called as a community. I may need to acquire some pom-poms for my expanded job as cheerleader: "You can do it! You can do it!" All that said, I have been blogging at least occasionally on our congregational blog. So feel free to jump over there when you miss me.

*8 Things I Fell in Love with in 2009

Rachelle at Magpie Girl has another *8 Things list - of things she fell in love with last year. Here's my list of *8 Things I fell in love with in 2009: 1. The baby I lost. 2. The house we now live in. 3. Car camping - who knew? We had a great week on the Olympic Penninsula in August. I highly recommend the Fairholme Campground on Lake Crescent. 4. Our CSA - Cloud Nine Farm. 5. The Bozeman Public Library, and my trusty library card. 6. Writing - National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month. It hasn't always been pretty, or even readable, but the discipline helped boost my creativity... 7. Having a piano in my house. 8. Thanks to Pandora, English folk musician Kate Rusby.

Christmas Cards sans "The Letter"

I'm more than a little behind on sending Christmas cards, having sent all of four or five so far. I keep reminding myself that Christmas doesn't even START until after sundown on Christmas Eve, and then lasts for 12 whole days, but the "busiest day for the USPS" news segment last night re-ignited my culture driven angst. While I am sending cards, I'm not writing a Christmas letter this year (the man of the house wants to write one, which is fine, but I'm not sending one in "my" cards). I figure the defining moments of my year aren't exactly things most people want to read about while sipping cocoa and watching the lights twinkle on their Christmas trees. Instead I am penning simple greetings on each card and calling it good enough. I actually managed to watch two hours of TV last night. I try to catch Jay Leno on Mondays because he does "Headlines" which always crack me up. Last night he also welcomed "Garfunkel and Oates" - a hilarious duo with a hilarious song. Enjoy!!

It's Only A Month, Right?

I have been sucked in. While there were multiple days during November that I spent no time at the keyboard working on my NaNoWriMo masterpiece, I did enjoy the discipline of thinking about my story and characters. A friend from a previous lifetime (that would be high school) participated in NaBloPoMo last month (National Blog Posting Month) and wrote a blog post every day at Rhubarb Sky. I have been inspired. I will make no guarantees as to the quality of posts for the next 30 days, but I'll do my best when it comes to quantity: 30 more, at least. It's true what Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo says: all we need is a deadline.

I Wrote a Novel, Now What?

I am very happy to say I did it - and with two hours to spare. After pounding out 9000+ words of mediocre fiction I have successfully completed my first NaNoWriMo and quit for the day today at 50,388 words, according to the official word counter. My book still lacks a title, and I'm guessing it's going to take another 20,000 words or so to finish telling the story. BUT - it feels good. And Grant says, "I'm looking forward to having my wife back." Fair enough.

We are newly back in Bozeman after a week in Western Washington with my family. Advent is upon us and there is MUCH to do, like there always is. The discipline of writing has been good for me, though, and a facebook friend from another life participated in National Blog Writing Month during November - a post a day for a month - and it sounds like it might be fun. But maybe I'll wait til January for that...

Now, some sleep...

Unseen Endings Indeed

We have had all of four trick-or-treaters tonight, and try as I might to get them to show me a trick, they all looked at me like I was a crazy lady when they said, "Trick-or-treat," and I said, "Hmmm, how about a trick!?" Maybe next year...

Of course this means the three bags of candy I bought are likely to be consumed by yours truly. At least I planned ahead and only bought candy I like: 2 bags of Snickers and 1 Almond Joy. Now if I can just hide them from the man of the house.

I know it's been a long time since I've written anything. I'm proud to report that I'm back on my meds (no, I'm not kidding, it's round 3 of antidepressants in the last 10 years) and "doing the work" a la "What About Bob?"

I'm also proud to report (and slightly shocked at my decision to do this) that I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. I imagine that I'll be doing a lot more blog-writing in the next month as well, when I run a little short on plot! I'll keep you posted. At this point the ending really is unseen...