Archive for the 'A writer’s motivation' Category

How We May Finally Recover Ourselves

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot   The life of faith is a rescue mission, I thought, listening to our pastor preach on the woman at the well in yesterday’s sermon. He explained how
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How Jesus Unblocked My Writer’s Block and Freed Me to Write–for Good

“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.” – Thomas Merton All art, writing included, is built on ideas. The size of those ideas can’t be measured,
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Why You Can Never Fail

I need a story about failure,” I said to Sheri and the girls as we sat down to a Saturday night dinner of take-out pizza. “Surely you can help me think of something,” I added, laughing. “Should be plenty of material.”  But whether they knew something they didn’t want to share, or couldn’t think of anything, no one had an answer.
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Creativity and the Holy Pursuit of Delight

As I came to map out the work week with Sheri this morning, I made space to sit at the dining room table that looks out on the forest, reclaiming an edge from her paper collage experiment. I make efforts to be gentle and remind her not to apologize. It’s not the laptops and cellphones we should be making space for,
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Our Only Real Hope for 2017

Do you do New Year’s resolutions? I sort of do. I set some intentions based on who I want to be, goals I’d like to accomplish, and barriers I’d like to overcome. It’s nothing super specific or targeted. But this year, with one girl just entering the ‘tween years and one full-fledged teenager, there’s a certain urgency to get busy
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