Whatever He Says

I’m studying a book I’ve had for years: Writing Life Stories, by Bill Roorbach, with Kirsten Keckler Ph.D. I am struck by Bill Roorbach’s endearing personality, which shines through every line. He is helpful, wry, funny, and compassionately understanding of the aspiring writer. His book is not only a pleasure to read but is packed with wisdom. So why did I never apply myself to reading it? Life! Life in all its busyness can rob us of the best that is always there waiting for us to choose it. But I realize more than ever that a choice for something of importance implies excluding much else that is mere filler and froth. How distracting is the foam on the sand of my life—the rabbit holes of Facebook and Google are so addictive. But I realize that I cannot waste precious time and that I need self-control to avoid these tempting trapdoors. If not, they will win the battle for my time and attention. God, I’ve seen mention of self-control in the Bible as a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:...

  Labour Day 2015 was as hot and sultry as high summer. Yet, in the shade of our magnolia tree, I sat on our small north easterly deck, listening to the chatter of leaves in the soft breeze, and smiling at the irony that Labour Day, being a holiday, gave me permission to do nothing at all.  I did it--nothing, that is. I simply leaned back into my bright blue resin Adirondack chair and thought for a while as the cars on the nearby highway zoomed by as though in another world. For me, this Labour Day was the first in 41 years that didn't precede a paid workday. So I had the freedom, now, to choose how to spend my time and hadn't stopped thanking God for that privilege several times each day. The past year had been intense and busy. So much so that I found I couldn't write, even though there was so much to write about. At the end of each day, I had little energy, let alone time, so I focused instead on surviving the stress of my husband, Paul's heart attack; trying to...

As dusk fell gently over the green and gold patchwork of fields ripening for harvest, I counted down the kilometres to my destination, the farm in Norfolk County, where the mother of a friend lived. I had seen Lois once or twice from a distance at functions and talked to her over the phone a few times. Although she lives quite distant from me, our relationship is one of a shared affection for her daughter.  On this July Saturday, I had been visiting my daughter who lives just an hour from her farm and realised that being so relatively close to Lois's home was an opportunity too excellent to miss. I drove with a sense of adventure, following the disembodied voice of a GPS app to a place I'd never been before. I called the day before to make plans with Lois, saying that I would get there in the evening, on my way home from the town of St. Mary's and she graciously consented to my dropping by with the latest news of the person that connected us. My secret motivation was...

It was a season of “lasts:” the last budget preparation at year-end; the last 1.1 with each of her direct reports; the last meeting of each of the many groups and committees of which she had been part for so many years--the last this—the last that. She had loved her job these many years, and she had wanted to finish well, had worked hard at leaving everything in perfect shape for her successor. She was dutiful, committed, loyal and hardworking, no one could say otherwise, but now, as she sat at her desk one morning when the finish line was in sight, suddenly she felt an unfamiliar stirring  within her, a sort of reckless abandonment that was as intriguing as it was terrifying. She glanced at the clock hanging above her desk and realized that she had completely lost track of time while working to finish a project before leaving for another of those “last” meetings.   With a gasped, “Oh my goodness!” she quickly reigned in her thoughts, shut her laptop with a bang, and gath...

It reproach ed me silently as it has for almost two decades. I tried to read it when my father first gave it to me, saying, "Here's a book you should read. I think you'll like it." But I was always so busy, always trying to read several books at once, and not having much time to read anyway. It sat beside my bed or on the coffee table long enough that I lost the thread of the story, which spanned four hundred years. Tidying up one day I put it back on the shelf, and there it stayed. My father never forgot and would mention it from time to time. "Did you ever read that book?" he would ask, and I would inwardly squirm, make excuses and intend to do so...soon.  I knew that it would mean a lot to him if I read it--traveled the land within its pages--go where he had gone before:  Chesapeake. Recently I scanned my bookshelves, pulling off books for a writing exercise. The assignment was to look at first lines, as many as possible within a few hours, and...

The stocky brown haired man in the yellow rain slicker looked up from the front desk as if he'd been waiting just for me. With a twinkle in his eye and a broad smile that matched my own, he said, "Short story contest?" and motioned with his head towards a blue box  with a slit in the top, and a sign taped to the front. I heard a soft laugh behind me and saw that I was being followed by a petite blond woman waving a brown manila envelope similar to mine. She and the friend she was with both looked as though they were vibrating with as much excitement as me. Our eyes sparkled with it!   Before I put my envelope into the slot I asked if the friend would mind taking a photo of me putting it in. She laughed--she had brought her own camera to capture the moment of significance. We posed together with envelopes poised over the slot and were spontaneously joined by another hopeful contestant, a tall man with  glasses perched atop his  salt and pepper hair. As we walked...

I was the last to read a piece of writing out loud at the meeting of our writers group--our challenge being to write a description. I had rewritten a description of an old friend, originally written as an assignment for a writing course. Before I started reading I thought I had done a fairly good job of describing her, but as my carefully crafted words left the page and passed through my lips into the air, I felt them sinking to the the ground, lifeless. "She" wasn't in them somehow. I had painted a word picture entitled "Bird of Paradise;" but the soul that had touched my soul and left a lasting imprint, was missing; I knew it; did they? I finished reading with a combination of embarrassment and relief. It was the end of the evening anyway; I knew my friends needed to head out into the cold January night before it got very much later and I was anxious to end a moment that felt awkward to me. I looked up from the page with a smile, preparing to conc...

I recently read a lot of  Katie Funk Wiebe 's work. I came away enriched on many levels, but one small thing of value was learning about "weasel words," which I had never heard of before. I recognized them instantly once described, as the language that I spoke all too often, unwittingly. In her book,  You Never Gave Me a Name , Katie wrote that one of her husband's professors at Syracuse University told her that she used too many "weasel words" like "perhaps" to avoid saying what she meant. A few paragraphs later, she tells how she ended an appeal for reason, by saying, "Perhaps I am wrong in this," and says, "There was that weasel word 'perhaps' again.' From that moment on I noticed weasel words every time I wrote them or said them, and they seemed to pervade my emails with alarming frequency. I realized how often I weakened a point I really meant, by giving the receiver a way out of agreeing, in order to avoid bein...

Four of us came home from the annual writing conference of  The Word Guild  last Saturday evening, driving as far as we could  together in a small convoy of two cars.  We stopped for supper at Angel's Diner  before we had even left the city of Guelph and b y the time we left we were full of old fashioned diner food, served by an older woman  who made us feel like we'd come home to mom. No request was too much trouble. We left town inspired; grateful; invested in by skilled and successful teachers; encouraged; mentored; and having been connected with new friends and old. Our hearts, heads and souls were full, not to mention luggage (there is a book store...no more need be said.) As we unpacked and transferred cases, pillows and laptops from one car to another in our driveway, the unpacking had only just begun. There is so much information to process and solidify. I thought that I would unpack some of the things that I learned here, too, as the...

Chris, one of the friends staying with us at the moment, said, in catching up, "So how has it been going since you stepped down from the worship team to study and write?"  I wrote about that last year  here.  I made the decision in June, intending to narrow the focus of my spare time to the one thing I love doing more than anything else--writing.  Instead, as I explained to Chris with a little embarrassment, life speeded up in July and I was consumed by other duties and callings for the remainder of the year and into the last month, when I have finally slowed down enough to take some time off. Still, it was a good thing to have already let go of the added time that would have been given to being on a worship team. I was pondering this week whether I am silly to believe that God is involved in such small things as this, something so insignificant to anyone but me. What made me think about this was that I had just found an action that I was about to take blocked ...

During the past couple of days I found time, energy and inspiration--the key ingredients to write anything of worth. After my  Sweet September  post, Brave Raven left a lovely comment, quoting some of the lines I had written, and saying that she checks daily for just such a gift. Today in church I thanked her with a hug for the encouragement of her words. She, and a small but loyal band of readers make me want to write my heart out. I have a target reader, I realize; that unseen and mainly unknown friend for whom I tap out the words on the screen...it is someone who may or may not have faith in God personally, but they are open and "listening." They read here because what I write is down to earth, honest, and sometimes the adventure of my life is funny. I have a list in my head of those I know are reading and I never take them for granted; I treasure and appreciate them. This afternoon I wrote a writing prayer in my journal, and here it is, just so you know what I...

In  Bill Fledderus's  continuing class at Write! Canada: Finding Your Way Deeper Into Writing, we learned about the power of metaphor and how to use an object from nature that calls to us. Comparing a thing with a person can be a metaphor generator! I decided to use a pine cone and write about...well, here is what I wrote. Brown, light, life bringer, the pine cone whispers a message of rebirth. To be born anew it separates from parent bough and sister cones, to be buried in the earth. My mother's death was like that. She, separating from her family tree like fruit that was finally ripe and ready to fall. Separating as gently and easily as the pine cone. As naturally too. No fighting against it. Each created thing has its time to be born anew

One of the gifts of Write! Canada is making new friends. Let me introduce you to one I met this year: Jenny Svetec; who wrote a blog post entitled  Finding my Tribe  about her experience at Write! Canada.  

Song of Songs 2:4 New International Version (NIV) 4  Let him lead me to the banquet hall,      and let his banner  over me be love. I am full of gratitude for the sense of belonging at Write! Canada, and for the intensive  instruction, inspiration and fellowship packed into the two and a half days.  Back in April, I had a mental image as one of my colleagues prayed. It was an image of a person I knew was Jesus, with his back to me and towards a person who was surrounded by balls lying on the floor. My colleague had been praying for help juggling the balls we all try so hard to keep up in the air. The figure in the foreground picked up a blue ball from the ground and placed it so gently and lovingly in her hands; cupping her hands with both of his. The ball he gave her was the one to hold in that moment--it was the opposite of the stress of juggling balls, trying to keep them all in the air. The image impacted me th...

Write! Canada finished with more energy than a fireworks display in July. And this in spite of conversations in the lounge until the wee hours of the morning; and Night Owl and Early Bird reading sessions. Photo by Susan C. Stewart The final keynote speaker this afternoon, was Toronto scriptwriter,  Dennis Hassell . He launched us like rockets for our journeys home, with fire in our bellies and flaming fingers ready to hit our keyboards. Dennis spoke of the power of story. He likened stories to swallows. Stories go over and under defenses, like a swallow flies over the highest gates of a fortified city.  The Chronicles of Narnia  by C.S. Lewis was one wonderful example he gave. We bring people to "life," not through  polemics  but through parables. "Parables," said Dennis, "are not explicit, they are implicit. You have to puzzle it out." About our excuses not to write, Dennis quoted  Gandalf , the wizard of The Lord of the Rings, who said,...

Tonight's keynote speaker was author and professor of literature,  Carolyn Weber , who spoke about the spiritual journey chronicled in her book:  Surprised by Oxford;  a reference to C.S. Lewis's book, Surprised by Joy. She read from her book; a beautifully written memoir; and she spoke about the impact it had on her family; as broken and dysfunctional as any of our own. Marilyn Yocum wrote recently about  Every Writer's Dilemma: To Write Privately or Publicly , and I wrote too, in my post entitled,  Can't Do It , of my decision to draw a line in writing of some personal family history. Carolyn spoke of that very thing tonight and I thought that I would share a little of what she said. She quoted Samuel Coleridge--and I wrote it down quickly so it is just an approximation: "The process of selection is the hardest part of creation." How true that is! Here are my rough notes on four of Carolyn's "5 Golden Rules for Writing Memoir:" I'...

I can't tell every wonderful thing that has happened today; I hear the voice of one of my writing mentors, Marilyn Yocum  whose beginner's class I took in two different years at Write! Canada because I loved it and her so much. She is telling me, "No home movies."  So just two fun snippets! The conference has workshops and a selection of continuing classes over two and a half days. The continuing class I am taking is: Finding Your Way Deeper into Writing ; taught by  Bill Fledderus , Adjunct Lecturer in English at Redeemer University College. I am loving it. This bit of writing comes from a writing exercise in his class this afternoon when he was teaching us about creative non-fiction: My 41 year old daughter Brenda, has been packing up to move into a new house and came upstairs from her apartment, holding a small doll, saying, “Look what I found Mom."   The doll came without movable joints, and it squeaked when she squeezed it. I remember looking...

This morning I prepared to leave for Write! Canada, the writers conference in Guelph, which I have attended every year since 2000, with the exception of 2009 (due to a sudden illness that sabotaged my plans.) Susan hadn't planned on going this year, but on Tuesday evening, was wishing to God that she might be there, serving all the writers there in some way. At the very time she was expressing her heart wish to God, the managing director of The Word Guild, Denise Rumble, connected with me by email to say that their photographer was unable to make it at the last minute--and  she asked me, was Susan Stewart a photographer? In a whirlwind of phone calls and arrangements made at the speed of sound, the rest is history. Susan is going to the conference too, this year. We are all shouting, "Hurray!" I go with an expectation of learning; hearing from God and renewing my call and commitment to write. I look forward to the old and new connections that always happen at this c...

Note from Belinda The sadness at leaving Rob on our last day here is softened by excitement at another event that I am so thrilled to point readers to.  My dear friend Dave , known to many readers here through his frequent comments and occasional guest posts, invited me to write an article with him for the August edition of a newsletter for direct care professionals: Service, Support and Success.   The article is titled: Faith, Freedom and Fealty: Supporting People with Disabilities to Live Freely.   Please see Dave's post:  August Newsletter is Out  for details on how to order a copy and subscribe to the newsletter, which comes out monthly. Just  If you work supporting people, or know anyone who does, you will find the newsletter  excellent reading. Working on this article with Dave was a highlight of my writing life so far, although rather than being the lead writer as Dave  generously says on his blog, I had the supporting role! I...

By Belinda Last year I went to Write! Canada in the midst of a writerly identity crisis, some friends might remember! I wrote about it here: A Writer in Need of Direction June 22/2012 I had gone to the The Word Guild Writing Awards Gala which I attended with some friends and one of my granddaughters, Tori; a young writer in her own right. When all of the writers and editors in the room were asked to stand, I couldn't get up from my chair!  Afterwards I felt like such a failure. In front of Tori I had lacked the confidence to stand up. I told her later that I had been wrong to deny the call God has given me to write, and wrong to take it upon myself to judge the worth of what I write. I'm sure she'll have moments of self doubt if she continues to write and I hope that if she does, she'll remember her Omie's apology that night. I wrote how God answered my prayers for clarification and affirmation in this post:  Markers June 23/2012 . Write! Canada 2011 ended ...