• Anxious People & Deep Kindness: Everyone’s Doing Their Best…Aren’t We?

    Anxious People & Deep Kindness: Everyone’s Doing Their Best…Aren’t We?

    “We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to…

  • Book Review: The Sword in His Hand

    Book Review: The Sword in His Hand

    “I believe there will be justice, Torsten, for all the terrible wrong that has been done to you. But until you can forgive, you will never be free. You will never be free to love anything else but the sword in your hand,” (J.J. Fischer’s The Sword in His Hand, pg. 515) *** A fugitive washed…

  • Tending the Flame: 3 Ways to Stay Inspired with Your Writing

    Tending the Flame: 3 Ways to Stay Inspired with Your Writing

     “I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired every morning at nine o’clock.” ~ Peter De Vries When we talk to writers about inspiration, we usually want to know about their ideas. What sparks your stories? Where do your ideas come from? What made you think to use that setting…

  • Book Review: The Aroma of Beauty

    Book Review: The Aroma of Beauty

    “Beauty could not rebuild our cities, but it helped to rebuild our humanity and to bring us closer to one another. Beauty could not bring back family and friends, but it helped us weep for them, remember them, and celebrate them,” Aroma of Beauty, pp.138 What is the role of art in the midst of a…

  • People in A Story: How Book Characters Teach Us to Love Well

    People in A Story: How Book Characters Teach Us to Love Well

    “I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” ― G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America Loving characters…

  • The Giver: Choosing to Live In Color

    The Giver: Choosing to Live In Color

    “Sometimes I wish they’d ask for my wisdom more often–there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable–so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.“–The Giver, Lois Lowry (pp. 130). If given the choice between a life that’s painless…

  • Learning to Empathize with Hedda Gabler

    Learning to Empathize with Hedda Gabler

    “It’s a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.”― Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler Reading a play produces a very different experience than seeing it performed before your eyes. In a play, every detail adds layers to the words–the subtleties of tone,…

  • The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: When Society Trades Truth for Lies

    The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: When Society Trades Truth for Lies

    “I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of the line,” (Lucy Gray, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, pp. 493).  *** “‘If even the most innocent among us turn…