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Contemplative Writing Prompts for Lent: 2

If you’d like an explanation for this series of posts, peruse this introductory post. Otherwise, feel free to take the next twenty minutes and write on the prompt: Take five minutes and make a list of compromises you’ve made in life. Now take the next fifteen minutes and write on one of these compromises. Was it within yourself...

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Contemplative Writing Prompts for Lent

Mardi Gras is over. Lent has come upon us. For the next forty days (or so), those of us who follow the Lenten tradition will be focusing on practices designed to bring us closer to God. The goal is to prepare for Easter’s hallelujah moment of rebirth. This year, I will prepare by using Contemplative Writing Prompts for Lent. Lent and Contemplative...

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Ten Days Puny

Ten days I have been puny. As in 103 spiked temperature, followed by a long slow decline. The fever was a reaction to medicine. I recovered, fully enough to enjoy a writing conference in the Kiln. But the next week I spent more time horizontal than upright. Low grade fever. Constant headache. Abdominal pain. I finally decided it was a kidney stone,...

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Weather + Me

Soon, I will be able to show you this year’s decorations for Mardi Gras. But I’m waiting until the cold, cold, cold passes to put them up. That is supposed to happen today, so perhaps on Tuesday. This icy weather got me stuck in Jackson for several days. More importantly, it derailed the schedule I created January 1 (and was following)...

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Defragmenting Ourselves

When I was practicing law and computers were becoming networked, our IT expert insisted we turn off our machines every night. While the computers were sleeping, they were busy defragmenting, which meant pulling back together the pieces of data that had broken apart (at least that was how I understood it.) She said, if I didn’t turn off my...

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How I Forgot 2023

Going back through my 2023 date book to add recurring appointments to the 2024 book was eye-opening. It made me see how I forgot 2023. I could easily remember some wonderful new developments in my life in 2023. The Contemplative Writing Group, for one. My informal group of NOLA women asking the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana to own up to its founding...

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March of the Marys

Each day for three weeks a new Mary appeared on the table. A 3D Advent calendar. A march toward Christmas. You think I like Mary? On this the last day of Advent, I still have Marys left scattered around the house. Tomorrow, they will burst forth and scurry to the table to join their sisters in Christ in their jubilant March of the Marys. Mary...

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Let the Magic Be

I am a woman who likes a stool for my feet. Stepping stones along a garden path, too. I want my dog nestled beside me on the screened porch, holding watch—trespassers beware! Which reminds me of Winnie-the-Pooh and “Trespassers Will” a remnant of a sign hanging in The Hundred Acre Woods. I always identified with this woods because my...

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The Comfort of Winter

I am thinking today about how I’ve always hated fall for being the death of summer, but I’ve never split that from my love of winter. In a short story, I gave the narrator the sentiment that he loved Mississippi best in winter when color kicked in. Yellow grass, orange sage, black limbs against the clarified sky. In summer, Mississippi...

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