Month: June 2012

20 Tips For Writers You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date June 29, 2012
4 Comments on 20 Tips For Writers You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing. ~Hilaire Belloc

If you write about writing you will never run out of amusing material–as long as you are willing to laugh at yourself. Be a beginner writer and write about writing and you will find even the dog is chuckling behind your back.

Beginning is no fun. It is normal to wish we could skip the stumbling first steps, and the embarrassed laughter that follows. But embracing a new challenge in a more seasoned stage of life is particularly risky. Who wants to gingerly limp at an age when you had hoped for a poised and dignified stride?

Here’s the problem. For writers who remember a simpler day of blue notebooks and clunky typewriters, the learning curve has steepened. So, out of my recent, sometimes laughable experience I offer these hints:

20 Tips for Wanna-be Writers

Attend a writers conference.
Be inspired! Start a blog.
Realize you aren’t sure what a blog is for.
Buy Blogging for Dummies.
Try to figure out the Internet.
Try to figure out your computer.
Ask confusing, computer-related questions of everyone younger than you.
Create a profile page.
Have a close-up photo taken.
Notice how close a close-up is.
Consider plastic surgery.
Learn the secrets of social media.
Ask your Facebook friends to explain what Twitter really is.
Learn the secrets of a good book proposal.
Secretly wonder what kind of book you would propose.
Buy a Thesaurus.
Buy a new chair.
Buy comfy sweatpants.
Plan your first book-signing.
Write.

To save time, and improve faster, skip #1-19 and go straight to tip #20.

Do you have any helpful tips to share? Are you learning to laugh at yourself?

Tags writing

Faith Life

Change

Christ wants us to face reality as it is, including all the fears, hurts, resentments, and self-protective motives we work hard to keep out of sight, and to emerge as changed people. ~Larry Crabb

Scandinavian genes, New England upbringing, introverted by nature– privacy is fiercely defended territory in my DNA. Add to that a 15-year bout with legalism–the conscious attempt, by outward behavior, to become what I was not–I was in trouble.

When our energies and efforts are directed toward trying to prove we are better than we are, we embrace a lie, and slowly die.

We pretend to be better (I’m a good person!)
We pretend we are doing better…

…than the voice of longing and disappointment deep within would claim.

Church people are often the worst. Testimonies are given in the past tense–I once was lost, but now I’m fine, was blind, but now I’ve arrived. So, who is most likely to stay home on a Sunday morning? The empty, doubting and confused or the self-satisfied and full?

When I wasn’t looking, Larry Crabb’s book, Inside Out, slipped right past my PRIVATE, THANKS sign. His words exposed the true motivation behind my pious efforts–to avoid facing my own inner mess.

Change begins when we face the truth:

This life will never be complete. We will never be what we wish we could be. We will hunger and thirst, long for and sigh, disappoint and be hurt as long as we are here. To face that truth is to begin to change.

Come, all you who are weary, who hunger and thirst for what you cannot name. Come, you doubters and sinners, you losers and quitters. Come, you hopeful and despairing, haters and lovers, complainers and grateful. Come to me, the Living Water. In me your thirsty souls will find relief.

(Psalm 63:1 Isaiah 55:1-2 John 4: 13-14; 7:37-38 Revelation 22:17)

Tags change, Christ, lies, truth

Faith

Sabbath Quiet: Loved First

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date June 24, 2012
10 Comments on Sabbath Quiet: Loved First

I miss my time with you. ~God

You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You have only loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many times and every day and our whole life through.

When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You–You are the first–You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at the same second turn my soul toward You in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first.

When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul toward You, You are the first and thus forever. And yet we always speak ungratefully as if You have loved us first only once.

Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher (1813-1855)

Tags love

Faith Life

First Things First

What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our hearts on the only necessary thing. -Henri J.M. Nouwen

Business and worries are enemies of the spiritual life, but what are we to do? Jesus is a realist. He doesn’t demand that we drop our commitments and stop caring about our needs; but to change our center of gravity.

There is a deep truth at work: If we put first things first, the rest will fall into place.

When you find your mind reeling with fear for yourself or another, concentrate not on the what-if’s but on the what-are’s and seek first:

The one reign that matters
The one reason you were made
The one hope that cannot die
The one love that will not fail
The one joy outlasting the rest.

Make the kingdom of God your primary concern and the other things, that God already knows you need, will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

Could it be that simple? Do we dare loosen ourselves from the paralyzing grip of dread?

Worry Bowl

I am not by nature a worrier. But sometimes problems stack up, circling restlessly overhead, and I freeze. I am too small and inept to ensure a safe landing for the people I love.

So, I have a worry bowl. Folded inside are slips of paper, the names and needs I turn over with relief to the One, whose timing and wisdom are perfectly suited for the task.

When I empty the bowl on occasion, I am amazed at what I find.

What do you do to keep worry in its place?

Tags worry

Culture Faith Life

Why Worry?

Worrying has become such a part and parcel of our daily life that a life without worries seems not only impossible, but even desirable. We have a suspicion that to be carefree is unrealistic and–worse–dangerous. ~Henri J.M. Nouwen

Worry is a kind of spiritual bulimia. Like its physical counterpart, worry disorders our lives and does violence to our well-being.

By forcing our thoughts to dwell on the what-if’s just around the bend,
we empty the present moment of its power and provision,
and reject our precious allotment of grace.

As a young adult, the pressure to possess, to perform, and to plan obsessively for any potential calamity became the air I breathed. One day I received a gift, Making All Things New: An Introduction to the Spiritual Life by Henri J.M. Nouwen, one of many books God has intentionally scattered on my path.

What are the enemies of the spiritual life, a life in which all things are made new? Nouwen begins with busyness and worry–the occupations and preoccupations that fill up our present and crowd out the future before we even arrive.

Hummingbird Rest

My eyes are drawn to the hummingbird feeder hanging just outside my window. From here I can watch the diving, sparring and sipping of these lively birds. On a rare day a brave little one, relaxed and unguarded, will still its beating wings and rest. As the bird leans forward to guzzle the sweet nectar, I hear the invitation, “This is what I long for from you. Stop fluttering, be still, drink deeply of me.”

But what does that mean for me, or for you, who live in such uncertain times? How do we move from a life of distraction and concern for what might come, to one of grateful feasting and renewal right where we are?

Tags worry

Faith

Sabbath Quiet: Renew Me

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ~Paul, the Apostle

Lord Jesus Christ; Let me seek you by desiring you, and let me desire you by seeking you; let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you.

I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving that you made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you.

But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults, and darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless you renew and refashion it.

Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is in no way equal to that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves.

I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand.

St. Anselm, 1033-1109, medieval theologian and philosopher

Tags renewal

Culture Life

Another Story

Tell me a fact and I will learn. Tell me a truth and I will believe. Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. ~Old Indian Proverb.

Sitting Bull

We can ignore statistics. We can ignore the headlines and soundbites. But few of us can protect ourselves from the power of another’s story.

I was sixteen years old when I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. The book traced the history of western expansion in the 19th century not from the point of view of the explorers and settlers, but through the eloquent, sorrow-filled words of the American Indians themselves. The tragic tales of broken promises, ruthless greed and brutality beyond belief left me stunned.

My father still wryly recalls my frustrated angst dominating our meal time discussion. Every school research paper took shape around the topic. I don’t think statistics or a cold recitation of facts could have wrenched my conscience as did the simple words of other human beings with dreams and longings like my own.

I have since read other books, and other life stories have pierced through my self-deceit, so I know: There is power in another person’s story to grab us, wake us, and even save us from ourselves.

Everyone has a story.

Whose do you need to hear? Is there someone near you silently asking you to take a second look?

But not everyone knows how to tell it.

Some of us are hidden even from ourselves. It may be your voice we need to tell the world our tale.

Whose story has shaken you or wakened you?

Tags story

Faith Life

Facing Fear

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. ~J.R.R Tolkien

What you fear, you will face.

Introverts will be asked to speak to the crowd.
Extroverts will find themselves suddenly alone.
The timid will be appointed to lead the charge.
The arrogant will have power pried from their grasp

Have you seen this to be true? And when you face the very enemy you most dread, a circumstance that the person next to you would slip through with ease, do you chalk it up to the finger of sadistic fate, or to a Divine Artist’s careful design?

A prayer, a dance

In Elizabeth Goudge’s The Scent of Water, a vicar offers a life-giving prayer to a young girl in crisis, There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each. They are these,

Lord have mercy.
Thee I adore.
Into Thy hands.

A cry for help. A sigh of gratitude. A costly surrender.

Trust, remember, yield. Turn, look up, let go.

A trinitarian dance for this life–the cadence and choreography to lead us through even what we dread most. But someday we will need only the middle prayer. In both meanings of the word we will adore God (verb) and adore God (feeling). We will realize that with every cry he drew near, and our every act of obedience was carefully poured, like precious oil, over the rusted, broken pieces of our efforts.

And we will fear no more.

Are you facing what you most feared? What are you learning in the midst of the storm?

Tags fear

Faith Life

Sabbath Quiet: Rooted

To be rooted is perhaps the most important but least understood need of the human soul. ~Simone Weil

For the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our grateful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour, of the day and of the night, hill and vale and tree and flower, sun and moon and stars of light,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our grateful hymn of praise.

For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth, and friends above, pleasures pure and undefiled,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our grateful hymn of praise.

For each perfect gift of thine, to our race so freely given, graces human and divine, flowers of earth and buds of heaven,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our grateful hymn of praise.

For thy Church which evermore lifteth holy hands above, offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love,

Lord of all, to thee we raise this our grateful hymn of praise.

~Folliot S. Pierpont

Photograph of Barrington, Rhode Island, where my roots keep drawing me back.

Tags family, love, roots

Bible Studies Faith Life

Dream Keeper

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. ~Langston Hughes

A gift of dreams

It was a birthday gift, The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes–my first book of poems. Along with it, a black leather-bound volume of unspoiled pages, inscribed with these words, “The pages of this little book are filled with unwritten poems–your poems. May each be a true expression of what is in your soul.”

I thrilled to imagine myself as a poet, and spent long hours with paper and pencil stub in hand. But the book is not full, the last poem dated October, 1976. I’m not good at holding fast to dreams. I set them loose at the first sign of resistance.

Joseph, the dreamer

This summer I am writing a Bible study about Joseph, the one with a coat-of-many-colors. Joseph’s is a story shaped by dreams. Some are unspoken, like his brothers’ jealous longings, his father’s foolish hopes. But others are more literal–his vision of sheaves and stars and dominion, the Pharaoh’s troubled nightmares of cattle and corn.

And then there are God’s dreams. Joseph’s dreams almost kill him, the Pharaoh’s dreams lead to fortunes upended. But it is God’s dreams that steal the show. The nail-biter end of the story surprises me every time–in the fulfillment of God’s big plan, all lesser dreams come true as well.

I invite you to take a moment, away from demands; set aside the urgent and

Ask yourself :

What are God’s dreams for his world?
What dreams does he dream with you in mind?
What dreams do you hold close to your heart?
What dreams have you let go of before their time?
Have you let God be the Dream Keeper for you?

Tags dream