Tag: family

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Spiritual Journey: Doubt

This month’s Spiritual Journey is hosted by Patricia Franz, who has selected doubt as the theme. You can read her post here. It’s quite inspiring, and I particularly love her insight as she shares her thinking on doubt: I’m convinced that doubt lives in the imperfect space between who we are and who we think we want to be.

Since Patricia’s post last Thursday, I’ve returned again and again to this idea, toying with doubt and how it plays out in my own life in risks not taken and opportunities not seized. Fear and doubt are close friends with deeply intertwining roots. And what is doubt’s opposite? Certainty? Trust? Belief? In Hebrews, the Bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So by that definition, faith is the opposite of doubt.

I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomas, but I will be the first to confess that I may score a perfect 10 in Olympic skepticism. My mother’s keen eye for scrutiny and her innate sense of intuition, passed on to her from her mother – and hers before her – ended up in me and my own children. It’s a form of doubt, yes, and on the Myers-Briggs Personality test it’s that gnawing J for judging in the analytics that gets me, where I’d much prefer be a perceiver.

I do some doubting.

But I also do some praying. Nearly a decade ago, I made the decision to turn off the radio and the audiobooks on the way to work and use the drive as my dedicated prayer time each morning. My drive to the office is roughly 8 to 10 minutes, and I pray for each of our children, their mates, and their children. I pray for each side of our extended family and always add “even the ones we don’t like,” because, you know, God already knows about that whole mess.

At the end of Patricia’s post, she shares that she tries to cultivate doubt as a spiritual practice– deepening my capacity to sit with questions; allowing space for the sacred pause; learning to be comfortable living in the mystery. This, too, resonates deeply with me this morning as I write in my favorite green chair in the living room, my Schnoodle Boo Radley draped over the back of my chair near my neck, and his rescued brothers Fitz and Ollie snoozing on the floor at complete peace with the world around them, doubting nothing more than the intentions of every deer and squirrel in the yard.

Like Patricia, I need to embrace my doubts and celebrate them as gutterball rails to be used to discern correct steps where I ask the Lord to illuminate the paths I should take. Just like that concept of Danish hygge that I love so much in the winter – – we can’t have the concept of hygge, or the warmth and comfort within the cozy cabin, without the raging blizzard outside. The feeling of warmth and comfort has to have its opposite somewhere to be appreciated.

Such is doubt. In the tiny cabin of the heart and soul, where the storms of doubt rage outside, faith is the strong assurance that despite the weatherman or his alarmist reports, all will be well as we trust the good Lord and His plan. Faith shines most brightly in the threat of doubt.

in a world of doubt

we can choose the light of faith

to guide us through storms

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November Noel No-Nonsense Nonet

I used to laugh at those memes where families come home from trick-or-treating and put up the Christmas tree. I used to remind myself to give the turkey its day in the spotlight. I’ll admit it: I used to judge those folks, those ridiculous early decorators.

No, no, no, no, no! Not anymore.

The older I get, the more I realize I need to pace myself in decorating. It takes moving a chair to make a space for a tree, unboxing the Nativity set, and spinning a fresh bow for the year-round wreath on the east-facing front door (I love the way it frames the early morning sunrise through the door glass from my living room chair). If my husband and I are going to do all this decorating in our sixties, we need time to recover and to enjoy it before it’s time to take it all down again.

I’m firmly in the camp that if I’m putting it up, I want six to eight weeks to enjoy it. Anything less is too taxing on this body.

There have been years we didn’t decorate at all – – those years we went places and knew no one would be here to celebrate since we’d be in others’ homes in other states. But as grandchildren visit and we gather with friends and other family who often come on different weekends between now and the first of the year, we’ve come to understand those silly home-from-Halloween-now-let’s-put-up-the-tree memes.

Even though we decorate simply and minimally in the quiet shades of nature when we do, we realize it’s all about creating a Christmas ambiance that welcomes visitors who drop in anytime during the holidays. A simple burlap and twig tree, a box shrub wreath, a Nativity set and we’ll be ready to welcome the season. Come see us!

November Noel No-Nonsense Nonet

the older we get, the more we see

we need to decorate early

to recover from the work

(pacing is not enough)

dare I admit that

our Christmas tree

is going

up this

week????

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for providing teachers a space to write and share

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November Shadorma

November Shadorma

go ahead

eat the pumpkin pie

before the

turkey comes

out of the oven all browned

is there a main course?

……and just like that, after Halloween candy and football player costumes and all the fun of fall festivals including a hayride around the campus at work, we are thrust unmercifully into the Christmas season. The candy at Dollar General is half price, and the one seasonal row they’d already dedicated to Christmas has expanded to three. It’s the season of eating, and no one is waiting on anything.

Today’s poem is a shadorma, a form similar to Haiku in syllable pattern. This form has six lines, and the syllable count on each line, in order, is 3,5,3,3,7,5. I’m a fan of eating dessert first, so I’m urging all pie lovers to take full advantage of throwing out the rules and questioning whether there is really a main course.

For me, it’s the pie.

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October 27 – Golden Shovel Poems

I worked with two Humanities teachers in our school district to acquaint students in our 9th Grade Academy with way that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used to mark the geography of a place from our writing. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry.

Golden Shovel Poems

A Golden Shovel poem takes a sentence or phrase from prose (or another poem) and writes it vertically, placing those words at the beginning or end of each line.  Ask me about double, triple, quadruple and quintuple shovels…..

Singing Off-Key

We spent the week together having fun and

Can’t wait to 

Leave on our next family trip, singing

Jesus, Take the Wheel with Carrie

In off-key high notes through the back roads of

Tennessee, Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain

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October 26 – Found Poetry

I worked with two Humanities teachers in my school district to design a writing workshop for students in our 9th Grade Academy with ways that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used in two variations: found poetry and blackout poetry. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry.

Found Poetry

Found poetry is poetry that is found in the words of existing poems or prose and created as a new original work.  Some poets use pages of discarded books or those from Little Free Libraries as a supply of pages. Blackout poetry is a form of found poetry.  In found poetry, you use any existing writing and swipe those words to go in your own poem.  In blackout poetry, you draw black lines through the words you did not select for your poem.  

A Silly Selfie

I thought it

   was a

          silly 

                selfie

                            this gift ~ 

                                                     one of the grandchildren 

            posing

                          playing

                                            the look on his face

                                                                      priceless

Here is what my blackout poem looked like in print form:

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October 25: Zip Odes

I created a writing workshop with two of our Humanities teachers to acquaint students in our 9th Grade Academy with way that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used to mark the geography of a place from our writing. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry. Today’s poem is a Zip Ode.

Zip Ode Poetry

A Zip Ode takes a Zip Code of a place, written vertically, and uses that many words on each line.  

Example:  Sevierville, Tennessee’s Zip Code is 37764

Zip Ode to Sevierville, Tennessee

3 Jesus came along

7 with us on our family vacation in

7 October, keeping children and adults in check

6 Hiding Him, Finding Him, Remembering Him

4 in thoughts and actions

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Gratitude for the Kindred Spirits Book Club and My Writing Group Friends

Kindred Spirits From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, Janette

Last year, we started a Central Office book club in our rural Georgia school district. This was Janette’s idea, but she graciously allowed me to help organize its inception. We asked another local book club if we could read their books they were not using, and we gave each title another round of reading before placing these in Little Free Libraries according to the grant provisions with which they were originally purchased. This club has become a sisterhood, and much like my writing group friends, our interactions go beyond the daily water station office talk into what goes on in our lives and how we feel about issues that arise in the books we read. We connect on a deeper level this way.

We’re a cross-section of society, which lends to richer discussion. I’m the oldest. Martina is the youngest. All of us are mothers and wives. Two of us are real sisters (Jill and Joy). Four of us are grandmothers. Two of us are preachers’ kids. We’ve all been through some tough times and bring differing perspectives to our conversations. But what’s most important is that we are all readers, we understand that every book is not going to get five stars but that there is something to take from each, and we embrace our collective voice on womanhood and readership. We’re the Kindred Spirits – and we are aptly named.

Last April, I shared a poem with our group each day during National Poetry Month, and while most were written by well-known poets, one or two were poems that I wrote. They know that writing poetry is what keeps me balanced at all times, but particularly in tough times – of which there have been many lately in my life. When my father died in June, I was sad that he would not be here to see the book I’d been working on for so long come out on Labor Day weekend.

Imagine my surprise when my Kindred Spirit sisters knew I was feeling down and threw an after-lunch dessert party for me and presented me with a poem that they had all written to cheer me up and celebrate me. I was moved to tears as they explained that they had each written two lines, and that the lines appeared in alphabetical order according to their names: Janette, Jennifer, Jill, Joy, and Martina.

I framed it and keep it among my greatest treasures; it means so much to me that in a time when I was grieving, my reading sisters built me up and reminded me that we are all in this together – – and that the tears along the journey can be turned into laughter and joy. We feel it in our local coffee shop on our small town square each month as we sip our brews and talk about the characters we have come to love (and dislike). We feel it at work as we deal with our day to day duties, and we will feel it in the movie theater later this week as we watch our monthly novel come to the big screen: Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You.

I’m not sure where I’d be without my reading group – and my writing groups. Today is a day to celebrate all of you (if you’re reading this, it includes you, too) who make a difference in my life. My glass is raised to you, dear friends, for all that you mean to me. You inspire me, and I appreciate each and every one of you!

Poem written for me by my Kindred Spirits book club
Front: Jill, Janette, Martina; Back: me, Joy (Jennifer is missing)

Books We’ve Read in our Club So Far:

The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

The Last Flight by Julie Clark

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

The Wedding People by Allison Espach

One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury

God of the Woods by Liz Moore

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Regretting You by Colleen Hoover

and

Selected Poems-a-Day for National Poetry Month


Book Club Haiku

we’re always on the

lookout for our next great read

….any suggestions?

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting Slice of Life
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Open Write Day 3 of 3 October 2025 – Fran Haley and Kim Johnson: Reading the Tea Leaves

Fran Haley of North Carolina and I are the hosts of this month’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, and we are on our third and final day of October’s prompts. Hop over to check out today’s poems later in the day to read the poems this prompt inspires.

Fran Haley is a K–12 literacy educator who coordinates elementary programs centered on a love of books and the joy of reading aloud. She helps young writers find their voices on the page in creative ways. A pastor’s wife, mom, and Franna of two spirited granddaughters, she savors the quiet rhythms of rural life near Raleigh, NC. The pre-dawn hours are Fran’s sacred writing time; you can find her there in the stillness, seated at the kitchen table with a sleeping puppy in her lap. She authors the blog Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Kim Johnson is the District Literacy Specialist for her rural school district in Zebulon, Georgia.  She grew up a preacher’s kid (P.K.) and is a mom and grandmother who enjoys weekend glamping with her husband and three schnoodles in State Parks.  Kim enjoys writing during Open Writes each month and blogs at Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse. 

Inspiration 

Fran: While searching for ideas, I came across this fun article, 75 Best Tea Quotes and Captions. Something here may call to your poet-heart. I also encountered a phrase I hadn’t heard before:  “More tea vicar.” Now, that’s just begging to be in a poem…

Kim:  A telephone conversation with my aunt about a family member’s messy breakup over foreseeable differences led her to conclude with this phrase:  he wasn’t reading the tea leaves.  This has stuck with me for years, and I think often about all the ways we read the world – and how we respond to it. 

Process

Pour a cup of tea and write with us today!  Let the pen lead you to a poem ~ perhaps it’s a play on words with -tea or tea- or -ity, or maybe it’s a memory of a cup of tea with someone you love.  Maybe it’s the clinking of cups on saucers that takes you to a memory of a meal – or a place.  Or perhaps it’s a phrase someone has used – More tea, Vicar or reading the tea leaves – that inspires your poem today.  Come have tea with us, and steep in the joy of poetry today!

Fran and Kim’s Poems

Fran:

A Spot o’ Tea 

“More tea, Vicar?” asked Mrs. Krupp,
tipping her pot o’er his empty cup.

He’d barely sipped when she leaned in with glee:

“Now, dear Vicar, go on…spill the tea!”

Deacon Blythe…and Mrs. Montague?!
Rumors steeped like fresh morning brew,
stirred in pews of St. Tempest-by-the-Sea—
ah, the unholy communion of sipping hot tea!

Kim:

-tea party

such vitriolic, hateful glares

when toxic dreams become nightmares

when tearful wake-up calls come clear

about those whom we hold so dear

who are these people in disguise

who scorn us with deceiving eyes

whose poison stench of mockery

reeks truth of trust’s reali-ty?

they’re mother, father, sibling, friend~

relationships we nurture, tend

whose revelations, suddenly,

cast doubt on rooted certain-ty

and so it goes with politics

religion and its heretics

that peace we seek, that uni-ty
is really up to us, we see 

we can agree to disagree

guard differences with digni-ty

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Open Write Day 1 of 3 October 2025 – Fran Haley

Our host today for the first day of the October Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Fran Haley of North Carolina. She and I are teaming up together this month to bring the writing prompts for the three days of this month’s challenge. Fran and I both live in small towns with the same name – she in North Carolina, and I in Georgia. Here’s a little more about Fran Haley:

Fran and Jesse

Fran Haley is a K–12 literacy educator who coordinates elementary programs centered on a love of books and the joy of reading aloud. She helps young writers find their voices on the page in creative ways. A pastor’s wife, mom, and Franna of two spirited granddaughters, she savors the quiet rhythms of rural life near Raleigh, NC. The pre-dawn hours are Fran’s sacred writing time; you can find her there in the stillness, seated at the kitchen table with a sleeping puppy (a miniature longhaired dachshund named Jesse) in her lap. She authors the blog Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Fran inspires us to write by reminding us of the significance of today. She says, “Today is the third Saturday in October, which happens to be National Sweetest Day, according to the National Day Calendar. Originally “Candy Day,” the recognition began in 1916 with American confectioners encouraging high standards in candy-making and the patronage of candy shops and bakeries. The observance was suspended due to sugar rationing in World War I. “Candy Day” eventually resumed; historians note that it was also meant to be altruistic, a time for buying sweets and distributing to those who could not afford them. The holiday later evolved into “Sweetest Day” and the giving of notes, cards, and gestures of love. “

She wonders what “sweet things” we can consider and shares her process here:

She adapted the list of suggestions on National Day Calendar for our purpose today:

  • Write a poem about your favorite candy or dessert
  • Write a metaphorical “sweet” recipe
  • Write a poetic note of love to a neighbor, co-worker, friend, or family member
  • Write a poem based on song lyrics about candy (think “Big Rock Candy Mountain”), or any “sweet” song you love
  • Write a sweet memory or gesture made toward you

Fran chose the last option, in narrative free verse.

Fran’s Poem

The Gift

Late in the evening 

my husband aims the remote,
presses a button,
banishes flickering ghosts.

All is still and silent in the lamplight. 

He turns to me:

 “You know I love you, don’t you?” 

That timbre—

that deep, low note in his voice

—my brain translates to

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Prepare for impact!
Even as I answer, Yesss, I am guessing:
The doctors have called. It’s his heart again.
Or worse. What now. What now.
We’ve spent the last decade—
a quarter of our marriage—
skidding to sudden stops,
pressing the pause button,
resuming in altered states,

patched and scarred.

I can’t even summon a prayer.
I brace for the crash.
The shattering.
But he’s just scrolling on his phone.
He holds it out:
“What do you think of this?”
A photo of a red-gold puppy
lying on a blanket.
I can’t process.
I’ve missed a cue
—how early does dementia begin?
“Precious,” I say, confused.
My husband looks at me for a long moment,
then: “He’s ours.
I put down a deposit
three days ago.”
What am I hearing?

Is this real?
A dream?
My heart had given up hoping
for a dog, in light of his battles…

yet this man, so valiant
in suffering,

begins to sob

with the magnitude
of his own sacrifice,

offering me
new life.


And she passes the pen to us with the challenge to write our own Sweetest Day poems. Here is mine:

Our youngest grandson, Silas, the sweetest 10-month-old

Pajama Adventure to Krispy Kreme

it was just after 7 a.m.

I was still in pajamas

writing at the kitchen table

on family vacation

when my son asked

you want to take a ride?

I reminded him: I’m still in pajamas

no worries, he assured ~ come on!

the hot light came on as he pulled

into the parking lot

and a couple dozen later

we were on our way back

with hats and hot glazed doughnuts,

creme filled and sugar-laden,

to share with the others

just as the good Lord

intended

My son, Marshall, who knows how to share the best breakfast, with son River