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Tag: homeless

My Wednesdays

I never know what to do with Wednesdays. At 8:00, I go to church. The priest sometimes stops the liturgy to urge us to look overhead and watch the light show: dust motes floating in the sunbeams from the stained glass windows. Today, because it’s Fourth of July week, the guitarist during communion plays “This Land is Your Land.”...

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How Have Your Dreams Changed?

(Written today at Door of Hope Writing Group) When I was in junior high, I wanted to be a Viking. A Viking wife, actually, who stood on the deserted beach and threw logs on a blazing bonfire as I gazed out to sea, awaiting the return of the long-unseen ship. In high school, I dreamed of moving to Maine and living on the pounding coastline where...

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Becoming a Writer

Way back at the beginning, I was puzzled about how 15 writers and a nonprofit could publish a book. What would be the arrangement between the authors and the nonprofit? What about the understanding among the writers, some of whom had many entries, some of whom had few? How would we make this fair? The questions overwhelmed answers. My former-lawyer...

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A Good Book Day

William and I began our lessons on “How to Play Bridge.” We established that you arrange your hand by suit; you must follow suit; the higher card in a suit wins; ace is the highest card. The rules called the winning process taking “tricks.” William called them books. We played. We made books. William made more books than...

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Don’t Re-Read Your Journal if You Can’t Take It

The entries are from 2008. I had been involved with writing group for a year. Each week, after we met, I came home and wrote into the journal every significant thing I could remember having happened. The journal helped me process the chaotic hour that was a weekly writing group of men and women who had experienced homelessness. I am reviewing...

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I am Beyond Thrilled

I’ve had a book published, okay? I went through the fairly tortuous experience of editing and re-editing and receiving a proposed cover and approving the interior illustrations . . . I’ve done all that. Yet. I am beyond thrilled to see the examples of how Writing Our Way Home: A Group Journey Out of Homelessness might look. This isn’t...

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I’ve seen the Glimmering

That little glimmer of hope that appears like a flickering flame when you’ve been immersed in darkness for so long you’ve allowed the prospect of success to dim, smoldering. Not a giving up—no way!— but a dampening down, a waiting, a refusal to let hope spring into false hope until real tender presents for a true igniting. That’s...

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Why Utah Set Me Off

I want housing for the homeless to be designed by men and women who have been homeless. I want us to ask: where would be most convenient for you? What do you want in terms of size? What community space do you want? Do you want a front porch? I want us to care enough to design space useful to people instead of putting folks in available apartments...

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