Tag: power

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The Power of Connection in a Slice of Life Neighborhood- Slice of Life Challenge Day 22, Stafford Challenge Day 66

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers
The windows should all be open, but Gemini didn’t listen.

A week ago, Lainie Levin posted an announcement that I wish could be reposted every day. Below, she states that engaging with others is the single most powerful thing that builds community during this challenge.

I emailed her immediately to ask if I could repost this announcement. She readily agreed.

Which brings me to a connection that stopped me in my tracks. I was having a conversation with the Poetry Fox as we were working out the details of his visit to Georgia from North Carolina. I asked him to describe what his events look like, and he told me that he sits at his typewriter and writes on-demand poetry for people who give him a word. He said, “And really, it’s not even about the poem. It’s about the connections I make and the people I get to meet. Those moments of connecting with someone are what it’s all about.”

I’ve thought about this again and again as I have returned to the conversation and the blog announcement and reflected on the power of connection. This community would be nothing without it. I realize that when I wake up during March and get to open the blogging windows and drink my coffee with an entire community and we’re all talking to each other about the slices of our lives and what is happening, there is power in these moments. We may all be tired and worn thin some days, but I know things about you – the people in my community – and I know many of your family members and how you spend time.

I know Paul likes to cook and actually likes Brussels sprouts (I thought I was the only one), Glenda likes to travel and has a voracious appetite for adventure (and will be having quite an adventure today – – I won’t spoil her surprise, but be on the lookout for something uniquely and colorfully …..uplifting)! Denise hikes in the desert and has a stargazer window in her house, Fran watches birds and is teaching her little granddaughters to love them too, Maureen also has two young granddaughters who love music and art and the outdoors, Peter is beginning to grieve the loss of a loved one and many of us are keeping his family close in our thoughts, Barb loves poetry slams and art exhibits and spending time outdoors, Sally checks in on her mom and has a granddaughter with new shoes, Margaret lives on the bayou and has the cutest ducks that jump into the water on jump day, and Joanne loves flowers and gardening. And I’m getting to know each of you, too!

Even though we all live in different places across the nation and beyond, I imagine a high rise brick apartment building where we’re all sitting in an open window chatting, waving, greeting each other at the start of the day, and smiling, rather like we might look from windows on the cover of the New Yorker if someone illustrated all of us in one drawing. We’d see floral window boxes for the green thumbs, cats and dogs with the animal lovers, and food cooking on the stoves of the culinary artists. We’d see children playing with grandmothers and, in a Paul Fleishman Seedfolks-ish kind of way, we’d all be connecting, contributing in beautiful ways to the community vegetable garden and sharing what we have to share, helping as we can, reaching out as we have needs that others can help meet.

Connection. Conversation. Sharing. Caring, Responding in kindness. Giving. Living.

Because that’s what community and connection are all about, and it’s also what writing is about – – reaching the next person. Not the word choice, not the capitalization of proper nouns, and not the run-on sentences (which, like Brussels sprouts, I love, by the way).

Thank you for these marathon days in March where we build our own neighborhood, and the Tuesdays throughout the year where we keep in touch! And to the owners of the Slice of Life apartment building for letting us move in for a month, rent-free, a huge debt of gratitude is owed for all of your hard work in keeping the lights on and the water running.

You each make a difference!

Slice of Life Challenge 

Slice of Life Challenge
community connections:
open your windows!

pour a cup of tea
share family recipes
show trip photographs

compare hobby notes
reveal hopes and dreams
share fears and shed tears

open your windows!
connect with fellow writers
plant seeds. water them.

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Dangerous Readers – Stafford Challenge Day 24

Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

Today’s poem is a nonet, a nine-line poem in descending or ascending same-line-number-as-syllable order. This one is inspired by a fraud. 


#thesmartestoneintheroom

don't read enough to be dangerous
read enough to have influence ~
there is a marked difference
between coercion and
living example
that defines fraud
for all those
who read
deep
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Spirituality: Reverend Dr. Felix Haynes, Jr. on the Power of Books

Today’s guest writer is my father, Rev. Dr. Felix Haynes, Jr. , who shares his thoughts on the power of books to shape lives.

THE POWER OF BOOKS


In Little Letters to God, Margaret E. Sangster includes the following letter:


Dear God:
Three books came to me in this morning’s mail. They were messages from friends who wanted to share with me the pleasure of the printed word. One book was a love story, one was sparkling with inspiration, and one was a travel book that would transport me into far, forgotten places of the earth. As I unwrapped these books, I felt a sudden sense of reverence – reverence for you, God, who has given the authors a great expression. Through their eyes—and your wisdom—I shall be permitted to widen my vision.

Reading good books becomes a tool to widen our horizons and expand the depth of human experience. The poet Frances Thompson said books became to him “trumpet sounds from the hidden battlements of eternity.”

Books are forces to deepen our lives through spiritual and human development.
Well-selected books can push us towards a greater grasp of human maturity. Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”


Christian growth is a process, an alluring quest – exciting and fulfilling. Delving into the spirit of reading and study prevents stagnation. Life is an adventure, when we dare to climb, with compelling vistas that beckon us to new heights of understanding. Books are rungs on the ladder.


I have frequently used the metaphor of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem The Chambered Nautilus as an example of an ever-maturing growth pattern. This beautiful seashell is gradually enlarging compartments in which the mollusk lives as it grows larger and larger. The snail-like creature that lives inside grows and moves into the next compartment, where further growth and development occurs. This process continues in ever-increasing sized chambers, until finally, in the largest compartment, it moves out. The shell it leaves is a thing of great beauty – a fascinating analogy of the human spirit, continually growing and expanding, building ever more stately mansions.


In life, we travel various avenues in the quest of expanding our fulfillment on the journey. The power of the printed page is one such avenue, and when you combine this tool with dialogue and discussion about a book, it becomes a significant life-shaping kind of experience.


Dr. E. Glenn Hinson was one of the most probing professors of my seminary experience. His book Seekers After a Mature Faith states in the Preface:

“I have written this book with a firm conviction that private devotion is essential to the life of the {Christian} and that devotional classics have much to contribute to that devotion. The Bible holds many expressions about the power of the printed page. In the oldest of all biblical documents, the Book of Job, Job says:

'Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were
graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know that my redeemer lived, and
He shall stand in the latter day upon the earth.” (Job 19:23-25).'


Job’s passion was to remind those who would suffer of the greatness of God. The best of books that convey life-messages are prompted by a deep desire to help others along their journey.”


Ralph Waldo Emerson commented in one of his essays that reading books molds an individual. Any casual reading of biography will confirm this truth of the value of books on one’s life. For example, Charles Colson in his biography Born Again attributes much of his conversion to Christianity to reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

Samuel Miller of Harvard Divinity School has cited three things that a book may do to nurture faith. First, he says that a book can help “name” an experience. A book can help one see the reality of some experience in a manner that helps in some way to better deal with a situation. The “word is made flesh” and we weave the insight into character. A second benefit in the book’s nurturing of faith is that it can “resurrect certain levels or dimensions of our consciousness from a dormant condition.” In other words, self- understanding ~ in this respect, a book becomes the stimulus to an honest appraisal of one’s life. Authenticity emerges in a healthier manner. We can see ourselves in the pilgrimage of others. Another’s experience can bring about an awareness of some repressed areas which we many have neglected. The book leads to an understanding necessary to the revelation of a new vision. A third benefit is that a well selected book encourages productive reflection. We stretch and improve our spiritual posture.


A book that provides a good reading experience baffles and embraces us, inspires and challenges; and it can startle and unsettle. The values are inestimable intellectually and fuels the imagination causing one to reach for new heights. We should expect occasions in the reading of good books which cause us to rethink opinions and face new truths that change our path on the journey.


Charles Kingsley, a revered English writer says, “Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.” I would be quick to add this observation, based on my Doctor of Ministry work: The two things that most affect a person’s life are the people we meet and the books we read. I think Thomas a Kempis said the most appropriate word about the power of Books:


"If he should not lose his reward who gives a cup of cold water to his thirsty
neighbor, what will not be the reward of those who by putting good books into the hands of those neighbors, open to them the fountains of eternal life?"


And Mark Twain, who always has a bold word, appropriately reminds us that “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.“