Category: Spirituality/Inspiration

Posted on

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Compassion

My father died June 13 after a long battle with Pulmonary Fibrosis, Colorectal Cancer, and Prostate Cancer. We are nearly four months into life without him, and yet the grief my brother and I have experienced has been an emotional roller coaster of shock, anger, and sadness compounded by the physical tasks of wrapping up his unfinished business and cleaning his house and seven storage rooms.

You read that right. Seven storage rooms.

Mom died ten years ago, and she’d been the glue. Once she was no longer here, his cord came unraveled. He would not allow others – especially his own children – to help him divest himself of his belongings, and he did not know how to handle these things alone – even though he insisted he did and promised time and again that he would.

Oh, how he was stubborn! He bought a car against the advice of the mechanic inspecting it (all because he’d lost the keys to the one he drove). He fired the housekeeper that his doctor strongly urged him to hire and keep after only one visit – reluctantly managing the hiring, but not the keeping.

We struggled to find compassion for Dad when he wouldn’t listen – and frustration lingers as my brother and I have had to bring our own lives to a screeching halt to try to clean up the mess he would not allow us to touch before school started back, which would have allowed a better pace and less racing against the clock to avoid additional monthly storage fees.

I’ll admit: I felt a certain smug satisfaction when a huge limb fell on his new car and knocked the side view mirror off, proving that the repair bills on that make and model would be far more than we knew he wanted to spend after he’d told us sternly that we were just wrong. I delighted in the concierge doctor who did more than suggest that the boxes stacked against the door of the guest room were a fire hazard and that the condition of the home warranted a housekeeper.

We came to places of disbelief, watching him do things no person in their right mind would do. Once we realized he wasn’t in his right mind, we developed what little compassion we could muster.

It was hard to feel compassion for our father, who seemed to be working against us at every turn.

Ephesians 4:32 says be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. How many times has God watched me make mistakes, deliberately and willfully, and then forgiven me with grace and mercy? I needed to extend grace to my earthly father the way my Heavenly Father has so freely offered it to me for 59 years. Even though compassion isn’t listed as one of the nine fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, I’m pretty sure it’s an offshoot fruit, like a secondary or tertiary fruit in the complete rainbow sherbet of spiritual fruits.

Feelings of guilt and regret emerged as we watched our father lying at peace in his Hospice bed, breathing machine as loud and obnoxious as an after-storm generator in a total power loss. I took photos of our hands holding his, so still against the backdrop of the snow white sheets. There was silence without peace, sleep without rest, stillness without calm in all the trademark ways that grief works.

I grappled with my lack of compassion when it mattered – and will carry some of that regret for the rest of my life. I was not as tactful and understanding as I could have been while Dad was still alive. But I take comfort that I held presence in those final weeks, burning sick and bereavement days at work to be with him. I invited his stories of the good old days, recorded them, and took interest in them. I offered words of thankfulness and pride in him, making our peace at the bitter end of a long road.

….still I wonder:

how far down the road

is self-forgiveness

and how does regret

over the absence

of compassion

get resolved?

I’m asking my Spiritual Journey friends for your stories and insights on compassion today. Please share your links to your blogs below. If you do not have a blog, please share your experiences and stories in the comments.

Posted on

Have You Enjoyed Life?

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. The prompt today is inspired by a question in Brother, I’m Dying asked by one of Edwidge Danticat’s brothers of his father after he tells his children he has a fatal disease. Goldberg asks us to answer that same question, honestly – to do an honest assessment.

I’ve chosen a shape poem today, also called a concrete poem since it takes the form of a tangible object or symbol shape. So here’s a lamp to shed a little truth on the answer to the question today.

Shedding Light On the Subject

I’ll answer

since you asked

I’ve enjoyed life, sure,

but I’m gonna squeeze out

the pulp and drink the dregs~

I’m ready

to retire

to travel

to linger over coffee

to wear comfortable shoes

I don’t want to slide into home

like a lot of people say they do

oh no, I want to be a little old

lady shuffling in with

hardly a breath left

Posted on

Body of Water

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt is to tell about a body of water with which you are familiar. What comes to mind is the creek that ran through the back yard of our honeymoon house years ago.

Honeymoon Creek

its babbling trickle

from the top of the mountain ~

we watched for black bears

from our wraparound

porch with fireplace and rockers

sipping fresh coffee

~ always, it seems, I

wish we were living right there

in all the wonder

Posted on

Open Write Day 3 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host for the last day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Barb and I have collaborated on several writing projects together over the past decade, most recently our book entitled Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment, published Taylor & Francis, a division of Routledge Press, released earlier this month. We write together the first Monday of each month in a small Zoom group and share what is happening in our lives. She’s the friend who shared with me the cards I’ve been using from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. You can read her full prompt here today, as she inspires us to choose any text or piece of art and write about it. She models an extended Fibonacci Sequence poem form using syllable counts 1,1,2,3,5,8 forward and reverse and I’m doing the same today with the same poem I used yesterday to inspire my writing ~ Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro. Hop on over to the prompt link later in the day to read the poems others have written!

What Marsh Nymphs Know

marsh

nymph’s

green glass

beads stolen

right out of the moon

attract the filthiest goblin

with more on his mind than those beads

but marsh nymphs know how

to handle

goblins ~

aim,

kick

Posted on

Open Write Day 1 of 3 September 2025 with Kelsey Bigelow

Today’s host of the first day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Kelsey Bigelow, who works as a mental health poet and renowned author of books, slam poetry events, and writing workshops in Iowa. You can read all about Kelsey and visit today’s prompt and poems here, as she inspires us to think about what lives on the “good side of memories.” Today’s writing is rooted in stream of consciousness writing that can live on in that form or be the start of one that takes root for another.

It’s All in the Kneading and Knowing

the happiest thing

I’ve ever tasted was that moment

when in my grief

soul-gutting tears in a

big-enough-for-all

walls of a VRBO

reverberating sniffles

and crumpled Kleenex

and happy laughs of

oblivious grandchildren playing

with their newest cousin

trying to teach him

to walk at six months

and believing he could

the strains of Amazing Grace

sung to a guitar

by the rest of us trying

to sing with the best of us

believing we could

as we all sat piled high

on the curved couch

pajama-clad, remembering

*******. ********

then one broke the silence

asking for a happier moment

in the autumn – another together

time when smiles returned

then another added

yeah, when

any of us can

make a word from tiles in

turntable Scrabble

and another added

yeah, and only if Mom

brings the pumpkin bread

and right then

in those delicate moments

I knew three things:

that I had taken the reins

as the newest family elder and

that tradition of togetherness

lives on in food tried first

as a flopped recipe

when they’re toddlers, then tested

again and again to perfection

by the time they’re teenagers

and can’t think of gatherings

without it and

that families too

are like that ~

learning to walk

learning to sing

learning to bake

learning to live on

believing

through all the tears and laughter

that together

we can

Posted on

Three Friends

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt inspires us to take the line of a book by Louise Erdrich, The Round House, and use this sentence to start writing. Here’s the line: I had three friends. I still keep up with two of them.

I had three friends. I

still keep up with two of them.

The other has died.

This is a true poem. Back in the early 1990s, we moved to a new subdivision full of young families. Between the time I left a job teaching preschoolers and the time I went back to school and began subbing and teaching full time, I was a stay-at-home mom. Four of us would gather to play cards and use coupons we’d clipped from the Sunday newspaper inserts as our betting money. We all had old recipe boxes we used to file our coupons into categories. Diaper coupons were the hot ones – we all wanted those! We passed the time together while our older children were at school a couple of days each week.

Two people (that I know of) from that subdivision ultimately developed MLS, and I must wonder if it is environmental with soil brought in as they graded those homesite lots in coastal South Carolina. One was a young child who is now an adult and fully confined to a wheelchair, and one was my cardplaying friend who had two young boys. She’d married her much older sweetheart in high school and smoked most of her adult life. She went back to college and got a degree in nursing, then retired from Hospice care a few years before she began experiencing the symptoms of MLS. That’s when my friend, a Hospice nurse, called in her own team of Hospice caregivers in the Spring of 2025 and died in July-only a few weeks after my father died.

I still have the ladder back chairs she and her husband gave us one year. I painted and recushioned them to match the dining room table from my great grandmother. The kitchen spirits are alive with stories and memories. I laugh and cry when I pause and think of all the love and laughter there in six chairs at that table.

Oh, the fun we had!

I thought of her last night as my brother and I attended the inaugural fundraiser for Hospice of the Golden Isles, where my father gained his wings. Bourbon and Bites at Village Landing on St. Simon’s Island was a huge success, and I’m pretty sure there were more spirits present than just the liquid variety. Cheers to all Hospice caregivers and to our friends and family who have known their comfort and care.

Posted on

Peace

Last month, I started writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt is about what brings peace and what is not peaceful in your day. As a fan of visual poetry, I chose the form of the breathing wave today the way it may appear on a screen in a medical office (scroll fast and you can see the wave appear in the line breaks.

Where Peace Lives

I’m up at 5 a.m. writing

most days, even today – a

weekend I’ve longed for

after months of long

trips home to clean out

Dad’s house. Peace awaits

~ coffee, silence, cool gray screen

backlit keyboard, eye masks ~ where

the meditations of mind and memory

converge without to-do lists

and deadlines and data

keeping the pulse in

check, breathing

slowly, deeply

where I belong

before the clock

kicks in, governing

routine like a thief of

time, getting in the way

of the relaxed pace of

living without all the

demands awaiting

outside these

doors in the

real world

I find my

peace

here

…..

Posted on

What Did You Bring

This month, I’m writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Today’s post inspires us to write about what we bring – in our purses, on a trip, to a party, in our suitcases, in our book bags or in our cars.

I’m reminded of our adventure book club that met at Barnstormer’s Restaurant in Williamson, Georgia the. month I couldn’t attend. You read that right. I’m reminded of a memory I don’t actually have. We’d recently finished reading a book entitled The Last Flight, where two women change identities to fly off to new lives but then one plane crashes. This inspired us to meet at our local small airport’s restaurant and actually bring a bag of only the five things we would take if we ever left and were limited in our departure possessions. They had to fit in a tote bag or small personal bag you’d carry when flying. We excluded cell phones, chargers, wallets with money/photos, and medications.

Only thing is, that’s when my father was in Hospice in his final hours and I was out of town – so I heard all about what happened at that book club meeting but was not able to attend. Today, this question for the prompt is timely. What would I bring?

5 Things I’d Bring

I’d bring the tiny obsidian dog

to remind me you knew my heart

I’d bring the silver pearl cross

to remind me you knew my faith

I’d bring the pumpkin bread recipe

to remind me you value tradition

I’d bring the bracelet with the cardinal

to remind me you know transcendending love

of motherhood

I’d bring the memories

to carry you in my heart forever

Posted on

Open Write Day 2 of 3 August 2025: Hermit Crab Poems

Hermit Crab Poem

Today our hosts for the second day of the August Open Write are Margaret Simon of Louisiana and Molly Hagan of Maine. The Open Write is a place for educators to nurture their writing lives and to advocate for writing poetry in community. We gather every month and daily in April to write together and to share our thoughts on the poems that are born of our shared prompts. Today’s prompt can be read in full here.

My friend Margaret lives on the Bayou Teche in Louisiana.  She and I made a presentation at the Faye B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg last April to share prompts from a book we wrote with our writing group – Words that Mend. She writes a blog regularly at http://reflectionsontheteche.com. Molly lives in an old red house, on top of a hill, in a small town in mid-coast Maine. She blogs regularly at www.nixthecomfortzone.com.

These friends inspire us to write Hermit Crab poems today.

They explain: “Hermit crabs are known for creating inventive homes in all sorts of surprising spaces and containers. As writers, we can use the containers of other types of writing to form inventive poetry!”  A hermit crab poem takes on another existing form, such as recipes, glossaries, quizzes, applications, etc. 

I chose an Amazon Review for my Hermit Crab Poem. I spend time there whenever I’m about to buy a product and thought of how apt it would be to combine the book The Gift of Nothing and an Amazon Review only without the book part. First thing: Pull some of my old Amazon Reviews off of Amazon. I’m sharing them below:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works for my Hard-to-fit-Ears

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2024

Verified Purchase

I don’t usually have such luck with earbuds. They don’t stay in my ears, most of them. These have the ear hooks so that they don’t have to shove all the way in to be effective. I can even wear them with my glasses. And the charge life is unreal – it lasts for weeks.

5.0 out of 5 stars Every Color

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2024

Size: 7.5Color: CharcoalVerified Purchase

I have them in every color. On my feet all day, I find comfort in these shoes that offer support and traction. Having them in every color takes the guesswork out of what to wear. It may seem boring, but there is a lot of reliability in a dependable shoe that doesn’t rub blisters and offers enough support and comfort to get through the long work days.


5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect comfort
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2024Size: 7.5Color: Obsidian Verified Purchase
You can’t ever go wrong with a pair of Tevas. They are like a little cloud of heaven to walk on.

Next, I took some of my actual words from these reviews and applied them to a review for Nothing in a prose poem review-style fashion. Here is my Hermit Crab poem, Amazon review style in a prose poem:

5.0 out of 5 stars: Nothing

I give nothing five out of five stars. It comes in every color and brings traction and support. It may seem boring, but there is reliability and dependability in nothing to get me through those long work days. Nothing is something that doesn’t have to get shoved in to be effective – it works with or without glasses, and the charge is unreal – – it lasts forever, practically! You can’t go wrong with nothing – it’s like a little cloud of heaven, and exactly what we’ll all take when we go there one day. So think ahead: get your nothing today – you will be glad you did!

Posted on

Being

This month, I’m writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. The prompt today captures the essence of what it feels like when you are all set to write, new journal and pens, time on your hands, the perfect chair, and nothing comes to mind that you feel like writing about. Today, Goldberg asks us to just write who we are, what we are feeling.

Layers of Being

when Dad woke up

after the shock

he announced he was

surprised to be here

and declared, I’m different

and it has me wondering

whether we exist in layers

of being

and when several get

torn away at once

we feel the going