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Contemplative Writing Prompts for Lent: 3

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 Contemplative Writing Prompts for Lent 3: For ten minutes, write what is in front of you. Use your five senses. It helps me to make a list down the left side of the page (sight, smell, hearing,...

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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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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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Phillis Wheatley Poetry Fest

I will take this extra hour of Daylight Savings Time’s end to tell you about this week’s Phillis Wheatley Poetry Fest in Jackson. Jackson State University sponsored the fest. The attendees met both in the downtown Convention Center and on the JSU campus. It was fabulous. Concurrent sessions began each day. A large gathering in the theater...

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Creativity Inside a Supportive Group

Today in writing group, I wrote about how practicing law haunts me. Why the hell do I dream about it every week, every ten days, every two weeks. Never more than a month goes by without a “practicing law” dream. Inside the writing, buried as deep as the pea beneath the hundred stacked mattresses, was the question: what gives you your...

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September Stories, or Happy New Year!

Today, driving down St. Charles, our oldest grandson said, “That sign says ‘Happy New Year.'” A conversation ensued about whether the sign was still up or already up. I thought, September has always been the New Year to me. When I see the calendar in my brain, it’s shaped like an Allen wrench. It goes straight across the...

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