Writing Lessons | Part III Today’s book-writing goal was lost to oversleeping. However, a few things on my helpful writing lessons list don’t actually happen in an obvious way, or while I’m writing at all. 7. Running. Running is a spiritual practice for…
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Writing Lessons | Part II Yesterday I shared three ideas that help me with writing. Here are three more, each supported by the research of Robert Boice. They are less intuitive, and yet extremely useful in establishing a writing habit. 4.…
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Silent Night Singing Silent Night to my daughter tonight, I knew what I wanted to say in today’s brief update. Atop of my list of reasons for laboring over Anatomy of a Schism is to transform the future for her generation. Gender…
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Promises It was with some guilt that I turned down a coaching opportunity last night for Academic Ladder. I told Coach Susanne about finishing my book and said, “I need to keep my promise to myself.” Sometimes that’s harder than…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XI
Beach Memos I took more time away from this blog than I intended. But apparently I needed the rest. Part of my time away was spent at the beach. Over the next few weeks I plan to share a few…
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Imagination This month I am working on an article with my partner in research in the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project. Chris Scharen and I are writing about pastoral imagination itself. And as a part of that we are reviewing literature…
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Rant on binge writing “I do not like it, Sam I am!” I’m with Dr. Seuss on this one. I do not like binge writing – that is excessive and obsessive writing for long stretches of time that robs one…
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So Noted My first conscious memory of note-writing comes from the elementary school. The teacher gave us lined paper. We had to learn the parts of a letter and fill in all out completely. Date. Name and address. Salutation. Body.…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXXVII
For me this week, which ends the church year, also marks coming around full circle in a year of blogging. I began with Advent last year. So this week I will take time to read through all 93 entries of the past year. Except for a six week sabbath in July and August, I blogged twice weekly. I will be noticing themes, ideas, patterns, and even things that are missing.
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This post is especially for the many of you who are also writers, or aspiring writers, sermon writers, devotional writers, academic writers, bloggers, and journal-keepers. This week I took steps to solidify one of my most central habits. I have a habit of writing. It has been slow coming.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXII
A Walk Down to the Lake
Deadline days
fill my mind with words and work
and give me tunnel vision
So when a small break between projects opens up . . .
Ordinary Time IX
The beach is awash in rocks. Each one a solid idea. Some round. Some fitting perfectly into an open palm. Others jagged. Miniscule. Others large as islands. Piles of ideas rolling around in the sea of time. Bumping into one another until no sharp edges remain.
Read MoreOrdinary Time II
I spent the summer of 1990 in Birmingham, Alabama. Like most summers in the deep South, it was hot, sweltering and sticky that summer. I had completed my first semester of seminary, and wanted to get some “field work” under my belt. So I applied to be an editorial assistant at Woman’s Missionary Union. I’d grown up on a steady diet of missions literature and practice which came out of Birmingham, so this was a bit like going to the holy city for me. Like most pilgrimages it had its moments of awe and its moments of disillusionment. It also held moments of learning and friendship, which have deepened across the years.
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