Distractions
“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing,...
Dancing with Bats
You’re taking a shower in your townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. It is a few years ago, but the memory remains vivid. With your freshly clean wet hair wrapped in a towel, you open the bathroom door and behold a dark brown bat with eight-inch wingspan heading your...
Perfection, Compassion and Self
Yesterday morning, Keith and I attended a service at Bethany Lutheran Church in Waynesboro. Pastor Tim Bohlmann was out of town at a conference, so his father Gordon, a retired Lutheran minister, gave the sermon, a message about perfection, or rather, the...
Seeing What I Have
Over the Independence Day holiday, Keith and I installed a closet organization system in the master bedroom closet. Some months ago, the original long shelf fell down under the weight of my cedar storage hanging-bag. We replaced that long shelf with a unit that has...
Why am I Writing?
Why do people become writers? The question arose during my Creative Nonfiction class at WriterHouse. One of my classmates, a clinical psychologist, said that people work for three reasons: money, career or mission. I wondered if one could work for all three...