She Thinks She's Witty

Last year Dana and Callie provided a great list  of questions as a kind of year-end review. I really liked the idea and thought I'd go along with it. I didn't do so well. They're doing it again this year and again, I really like it but am half a month late in jumping on. Please bare with me as I catch up and feel free to join in! The list of questions: When were you most grateful? What was the most delicious meal you ate? Where did you visit this year? What was the best book you read? What were your favorite songs? When did you celebrate? What astonished you? Where did you spend your money? What was your favorite blog post...that you read or wrote? When did you take the easy way? Who has been your teacher this year - officially or unofficially? What rocked your world, changed your life, shifted the ground beneath your feet? Most bizarre conversation of your year: script it. Use pseudonyms if necessary. What cracked you up? Where'd you find the best...

At Palmyra Church of the Brethren  (Find  PCoB  on Facebook also), we've been doing a series on powerful things that "speak." We have had sermons on several different topics: -Hope Speaks -Unity Speaks -Wisdom Speaks -Love Speaks, etc. I was asked to preach this Sunday on Forgiveness Speaks . I have here the result of that! If you'd like to hear a recording of me preaching the sermon, check out the church website here . Also,  here  is the bulletin if you would like to see that as well. I had two great worship leaders to help me out. My scripture was Matthew 18:21-22. For the 8am service I did the sermon and a prayer. For the 10:30am service I did the sermon, an invitation to sharing, and a litany of confession (which you can find here ). Where the litany calls for silence, we sang Kyrie from the blue Brethren hymnal. Side note: One of the highlights of the day was that my grandparents and a couple great aunts and uncles showed up to surprise me! And ...

Here it comes! 3 days away from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! This is my 4th year of trying to write 50,000 words in one month. I have never done it before, but I'm feelin' lucky this year. Or at least determined.  2013 was the year that I finally made it all the way through Lent with my discipline of blogging a prayer from Writing to God  by Rachel Hackenberg every day. Who knew 13 would be lucky this time 'round? Now, it's going to be the year that I finally win NaNoWriMo and get my very own printed copy of my novel at the end. Maybe I'll even buy myself the winner T-shirt if I make it, who knows?! I've been working through the book Ready, Set, Novel!  by one of the creators of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty , in hopes of being prepared for November. I've made pretty good progress and I have a few days to cram the last bits in.   But let's get to the real reason for this post. I've been seeing a lot of " NaNo Survival Kits ...

I haven't written a blog in a while and it's eating at me. Or, that is, I just keep eating because of the guilt of not blogging? Anyway, I'm apparently signed-up for weekly or monthly StumbleUpon newsletters. This just means that once in a while, StumbleUpon throws me an email with about four links and says you might like these... Usually, I look them over quickly, go to one or two, stare at the star-field it has placed in front of me, smile and delete the email. This last email, however, had something interesting in it. It's an article entitled, 30 Challenges for 30 Days . I followed the link and I have been inspired to try one of these. Watch the Ted talk below to get your own inspiration and then follow the link  to decide what your 30 day challenge will be. Every November for the past four years, I've been doing just what he talks about in the video, National Novel Writing Month ( NaNoWriMo ), and failing. I've gotten about halfway but I'...

If you were suddenly independently wealthy, how would you spend your time? What positive change would you bring to the world? I would spend my time  writing  and  promoting literacy  in children and adults. When you teach someone to read, it's a gift that keeps on giving. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through life without being able to read or write. I would think, though, that it would be a bit like being hard of hearing and mute. Hard of hearing because you wouldn't always even know what you were missing since you couldn't read it. And mute because you wouldn't have any other way to communicate. You couldn't write legal documents, you couldn't read a bedtime story to your little boy. So, if I became independently wealthy today, I'd spend my time writing stories for everyone to read (children's stories, adult fiction, non-fiction, anything) and then teaching others to read them. Not because I want to be famous (th...

To make our new housemates feel welcome, I tried to make a lovely cake. It started out so simple and easy...Doesn't it always when I bake? It was a box cake. I thought I would add a little color. A little flair, if you will. So I found some sixlets in our cubbard and thought I'd give them a whirl. (If you are thinking the same thing, don't waste your time. They just sink to the bottom and make your cake holey and vulnerable to breakage.) Then, once the mix was made, I went to put it into a glass 9x13 pan. Wrong again. Tricia was making casseroles for dinner and using both 9x13's. Alright, I've always wanted to try a two layer cake. Got out the two round pans and in they went. I greased them, but I didn't flour them...whoops. While they were baking, I whipped up some buttercream icing. It called for vanilla so I thought I'd also throw in a splash of almond extract and maybe a little green food coloring to make it pretty. Except that the splash of gree...

The Maddening Whispers I can hear the whispers coming from the books. They're calling to the echoes in my head. I’m surrounded by people but the stories I hear Come from the imagined beings in my mind, Crying to be let out. When I write, it’s as if I’m a medium For a stranger’s story that needs to be told. They push from the inside out. I want to scream. Not from pain or anger, Just in a hope that I can release at least one story into the universe. It would be faster than listening to the whole thing And never getting it exactly right. It’s giving life to someone—something—that should have been But never was. In the end, I can’t tell if it’s genius running through me Or just a full stomach. Love & Fancy Things, Rachel

"It was fun." "It was great." "It was a good experience." How do you come back from a mountain top weekend and explain all the nuanced amazingness of what happened. People ask, "How was it?" I say, "It was great!" But it's hard to delve into what was jam-packed into my brain. It's moments like that in which I wish I could do the Vulcan MindMeld so you could just experience this weekend for yourself. I now know why there are so many workshops, insight sessions, etc. that focus on how to help (mostly youth) process mountaintop experiences . Because no one who wasn't there with you, could ever really get it. That's not their fault, but it's the truth. All that to say, let me give you the tip of the iceberg of my experience in Chicago this weekend at the Volunteers Exploring Vocation ( VEV ) event. The theme was: Your Sons and Your Daughters Shall Prophecy . The event was held at the ChicagoCen...

Sometimes I think we should take a tip from the druggies and look at ourselves--really look at ourselves--as if seeing our hands for the first time. We need to stop and gain perspective and marvel at all that is right there in front of us every day, every minute, every second. The things we take for granted on a massive scale.

As a shout out to Nick Miller of New Girl , here's the start of my very own zombie novel : At age 14, Tree Banner didn't think there was anything worse in life than the name her hippy parents had stuck her with. Especially since her body type screamed anything but “Tree.” At age 24, however, she discovered she had been dead wrong [1] . Zombies eating said hippy parents was much worse than the name they had so lovingly bestowed upon her. At this very moment, however, Tree was thinking of anything except her name, her parents, or their being eaten. She was trying not to be eaten herself. She and her gang of misfits [2] were hunkered down in a big old Victorian house for the night. They didn't usually like big houses, but they had been in a rush and this one was already fortified. Though not very well if the inhabitants were no longer there. The corpses of the inhabitants were not there either, however, so they either made a break for it or were walki...

If I Could Talk to Me at Three If I could talk to me at three I’d tell me, It’ll be okay, baby girl, It’ll be okay. Life’s never as hard as you think it is. And we always make it out to be the hardest. When you’re stuck in the fourth grade Singin’ “Oh, Sammy, baby! My heart’s in misery,” It’ll feel like it’s the end of the world But it’s just the beginning. We feel so much And all we want to do is feel more. Like we’re begging for a heartbreak. Because the heartbroken are the most interesting And we love interesting. I’d say, baby girl, Life’s not over when you think you’ve lost your best friend Cause you’ll get her back And it’ll last a lifetime. To Africa and back. Standing outside the closet I locked myself in by accident I’d listen to the silent tears And tell me, baby girl, you’ll get out Don’t you worry, you’re Papa’s coming. We may do some stupid stuff, but we always have a good story to tell. And those a...