Poetry Sunday ~ The Zone

The Zone

I’m in the zone every day
walking forward in every way.
shining light come what may...
my world is not your own.

I try connecting each little thread
as they pass my world is fed
letting go of all I’ve bled.
My soul is fully grown.

I feel excluded from this place
earth no longer a happy space
I run with fear upon my face.
The wind knows all that’s blown.

In this life we all can see
something flows through you and me.
Vibrations of light we cannot flee.
I share all that I’ve known.

Here we are on our own,
embracing now we have grown.
wings whispered fully blown.
For all I’ve known
and now have shown!

Quotation Saturday

KNOWLEDGE

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
~Frank Herbert
 
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
~Henry Ford
 
"We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed."
~Charles Caleb Colton

INSPIRATION

I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
~Henry David Thoreau
 
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.
~Helen Keller
 
In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
When you become detached mentally from yourself and concentrate on helping other people with their difficulties, you will be able to cope with your own more effectively. Somehow, the act of self-giving is a personal power-releasing factor.
~Norman Vincent Peale
 
Basically we are all the same human beings with the same potential to be a good human being or a bad human being ... The important thing is to realize the positive side and try to increase that; realize the negative side and try to reduce. That's the way.
~Dalai Lama

ADDITUDE

"Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force."
~Tom Blandi
 
"When you consistently maintain a positive frame of mind, you'll become known as a problem-solver rather than a complainer. People avoid complainers. They seek out problem-solvers."
~Joseph Sommerville, PhD
 
When you think you cannot succeed then this is what the mind will believe. So, invest in your own confidence and change your mind into a positive resource. "Believe that you will succeed, and you will."
~Dale Carnegie
 
"In helping others, we shall help ourselves,
for whatever good we give out completes the circle
and comes back to us."
~Flora Edwards

MOTIVATION

"We all find ourselves in situations that at times seem hopeless.
And, we all have the choice to do nothing or take action."
~Catherine Pulsifer
 
"Failures are made only by those who fail to dare,
not by those who dare to fail."
~Lester B. Pearson
 
"For every failure, there's an alternative course of action.
You just have to find it.
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour."
~Mary Kay Ash

LAUGHTER

"Laugh and the world laughs with you,
weep and you weep alone."
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 
"At the height of laughter,
the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities."
~Jean Houston
 
"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
e..e. cummings
 
So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.
~Gordon W. Allport

“If what motivates you into laughter is a positive attitude, then you are on the right path to gaining knowledge!”
~Joni Zipp

Touch

I’m coming out of the woodwork today to talk about an enlightening TV show called Touch!
 
It’s not about T&A, sleaze or a reality show where trash and smut are tossed around like yesterdays garbage. No, instead it is about the reality of us all being connected in some way.

Very uplifting and inspiring, the show begins with a voice in the sea of words making a connection to all the people out here in the real world.

From the website:

We are all interconnected. Our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours.
This is the hopeful premise of the new drama TOUCH from creator and writer Tim Kring (“Heroes,” “Crossing Jordan”) and executive producers Peter Chernin (NEW GIRL, TERRA NOVA) and Katherine Pope (NEW GIRL, TERRA NOVA).
 
""Our lives are invisibly tied to those whos destinies touch ours""
 
Blending science, spirituality and emotion, the series will follow seemingly unrelated people all over the world whose lives affect each other in ways seen and unseen, known and unknown. At the story’s center is MARTIN BOHM (Kiefer Sutherland), a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, JAKE (David Mazouz). Caring, intelligent and thoughtful, Martin has tried everything to reach his son. But Jake never speaks, shows little emotion, and never allows himself to be touched by anyone, including Martin. Jake is obsessed with numbers—writing long strings of them in his ever-present notebooks—and with discarded cell phones.
 
Social worker CLEA HOPKINS (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) believes that Jake’s needs are too serious for Martin to handle. She sees a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control. She believes that it’s time for the state to intervene. So Jake is placed in foster care, despite Martin’s desperate objections.
"Martins quest to connect with his son will shape humanity's destiny"
 
But everything changes after Martin meets ARTHUR TELLER (Danny Glover), a professor and an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers. Martin learns that Jake possesses an extraordinary gift—the ability to perceive the seemingly hidden patterns that connect every life on the planet. While Martin wants nothing more than to communicate directly with his son, Jake connects to his father through numbers, not words. Martin realizes that it’s his job to decipher these numbers and recognize their meaning. As he puts the pieces together, he will help people across the world connect as their lives intersect according to the patterns Jake has foreseen.
Martin’s quest to connect with his son will shape humanity’s destiny.


Thursday nights on FOX 9 EST / 8 CST

***

While I’m not a fan of television because it has become a raunchy cesspool of dark matter for me, I saw a preview for Touch back in January and after the Premiere showing, I was hooked. Always feeling alone in my thoughts, no one understanding me and writing me off as ‘weird’, ‘strange’, and sometimes ‘loony’, Touched reached me and my thoughts and brought them to the world. But they were not just my thoughts, apparently they are the thoughts of many interconnected people.

As in all shows, they are connected to facebook and twitter, and I’ve found, that I’m NOT so alone. There are actually millions of people with these same threads that have bound them to this world, and we’re all finding that we are connected. I’m a very spiritual person, and have felt the connection to the world all my life, but only now, via a television show, does my connection not seem weird, strange or loony at all. The show actually makes me feel sane in an all too loosely tethered society.

I wrote on their facebook wall these words:
Thank you! I just wanted to say thank you, for not only connecting us all via the show but through facebook. You are connecting like- minded people who share many of the same ‘connections’ in our real life. What I like most about the show is that you make us like-minded people not feel so alone out in this vast universe sea of people, you have connected us all, and for that, I thank you! When I watch the show it is like looking up at the stars at night and forming images of the many lights. We may all be different but we are ALL under the same blanket, being woven together, one thread at a time.


Their response? (yes they actually respond to people!)
Thank YOU for being a fan, Joni. We couldn't have said it any better. :]

Astri's Birth Day

Astri’s Birth Day

***

I look around at everything,
for her soul's existence.
I cannot find her anywhere
through all my tried persistence.

A gently cradled baby;
a stroller passes by.
My eyes begin to fill with tears.
I ask the question why.

Why is she not here with me?
Why has she gone away?
Why am I the lonely one
left to brave each day?

Is she safe in heavens abode?
Are the Angels now her mother?
Is she within the vibrant realm,
that's home to her own brother?

Does she think of me, as I of her,
with every passing day?
Will we ever meet again?
I'm lost for what I'd say.

I feel her in the warm swift breeze,
I sense her in a flower.
The birds all sing a song for her;
a gentle rain’s her shower.

As years all pass I mark the day
the day that I gave birth.
The day I seen her soul depart
from this luscious earth.

author's note: It would be her eighth birthday.

We never forget...

4-26-04 to 4-26-04

Poetry Sunday ~ TOUCH

Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

TOUCH
***
by: Joni Zipp

People enter each waking day
to see the light in a whole new way.
Bump into a friend and make him fall
shaking the momentum of it all.

Connected and bound by a thread
whether alive or all but dead.
We journey through space as we go
our movement is but a candid light show.

Bound to this planet but not our souls
the fate of our life is within our goals.
Reach for the stars but then you see
another person touching thee.

Connected by mere space and time
words are but a musing rhyme.
What really matters is all that's changed
the lives for purpose have rearranged.

A lifetime of reason and mortal season,
we’re all together God wasn’t teasin’
Glue that bonds the earth and sea
every plant and fortuitous tree.

When one and one makes two alive
then three and four make seven arrive.
Understand the mirror that’s shattered
Is our journey; once whole, we mattered.

Quotation Saturday

PEOPLE

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
~Alexander Pope

Groups of people are like a massive Rock, Paper, Scissors war. 
~Daniel

Freaks are the much needed escape from the humdrum. They are poetry.
~Albert Perry

PHILOSPHICAL
 
We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
~Henry David Thoreau

Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
~Thomas Carlyle

Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
~John Lancaster Spalding

By daily dying I have come to be.
~Theodore Roethke

BEING YOURSELF

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~e.e. cummings, 1955
 
All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.
~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"
 
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
 
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
~Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 1750

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
~Homer

The man of masks need not hide. Some see clearly the man inside. ~ Joni Zipp

HAPPINESS
 
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
 ~Robertson Davies


Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
~Fyodor Dostoevsky

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
~James Openheim

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
~Margaret Young

SILENCE
 
True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. 
~William Penn

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
 ~Jean Arp
 
I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.
~Richard Steele
 
Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.
~James Thurber

FREE! Audiobook Giveaway

I have a lot of writer friends and as such, I KNOW they are all avid readers/listeners also. I also know how people are when something for FREE shows up, they stand up, run and grab themselves one if they can get at it quick enough.

Well as most of you know, my beau runs a successful audiobook review blog. He may not be loaded up in the follower department, but he knows his business. He was once blind, a determined man, that is when he began the site, but recently (October 10,2011) he had a cornea transplant which restored some of his vision and he turned a so so (bleh) blog, into a pretty awesome (YEAH!) blog.

He’s affiliated with MANY publishers who send out audiobooks for him to review and he has gotten quite an arsenal of good reads that he, even if he listens to three a day, cannot get through them all.

So he started his once a month audiobook giveaway, which is just what it says, a FREE audiobook giveaway. How he chooses which book goes up for grabs is beyond me, but as he goes into his fourth successful book giveaway, I deem it a success. Here’s how it works: you comment on his book giveaway, LEAVE AN EMAIL where to reach you, and that’s it. Wait for the end of the month, and one lucky commentator will walk away with the audiobook in hand, FREE of charge.

The deciding part. How does he choose one person? Well that is simple, he waves his magic wand, no no I’m kidding, he has within his bag of tricks many-sided die. Yup an eight sided dice? (Old Dungeons and Dragons game, don’t ask) lol He tells me how many people have responded CORRECTLY and *I* use the die and roll. Easy peasy, quick and easy!

I say responded correctly because many don’t leave an email address and Stormcrow has a way to go around spam bots like writing, audiobook-heaven at gmail dot com (your email address there) See? He can put it together and email the winner but he is no detective, where if you leave no email, he can’t hunt you down via the masses of people on the internet. So please, in the giveaway, PLEASE leave an email address or you become disqualified for the freebie.

And there’s more. Believe it or not, one of his publisher friends at Griffyn Ink is offering a FREE audio giveaway too. They approached him, asked if he would give away their book and as the good guy that he is, he obliged. Same rules apply! Leave a comment and an email address!

From Audiobook-heaven: “That’s right, we’re giving away one copy of each A J Scudiere audiobook listed. If you have a preference as to which one you’d like to win, please note that in your comment and we’ll do our best to oblige but there are no guarantees. The three audiobooks will be given away in MP3-USB flash drive form.”

So there you have it writing friends. Free! Free! Free! Now have at it, as my gift to YOU! :D

Poetry Sunday ~ My Mind's Eye

Job 8:16 He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden.

My Minds Eye
***
In the garden of my mind,
I till, I hoe, but never find.
The beauty that I’ve planted there
the seeds all gone with deep despair.

In the memories I can see
little seeds gazing back at me.
All the ones I forgot to plant
I comb the land and begin a chant.

“Little seed it’s you I sow,
wake up and sing as you grow;
bursting from the dormant soil
may you bloom with little toil.”

Putting all the rows in order
around my mind the visions border.
Full of new things that I’m shown,
plants will thrive once fully grown.

The past is gone, no seeds to mend
new blossoms in my soul I’ll tend.
Forgetting all that's gone before
My new year holds an open door.

Out with the old; in with the new
all the threads that I hold true.
My God is alive and all will see,
fruits of my garden, shine through me!

Quotation Saturday

SPRING

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
~W. Earl Hall

I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth?
~Edward Giobbi

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
~Bern Williams

GARDENS

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
~Dorothy Frances Gurney, "Garden Thoughts"

I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me.
~Robert Brault
 
Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. ~Karel Čapek, The Gardener's Year
 
I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself. And I find sufficient purpose for my day.
~Robert Brault

BUTTERFLIES

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.
~R.H. Heinlein
 
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
~Attributed to George Carlin
 
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
~Robert Frost, "Blue-Butterfly Day"

Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time.
~Deborah Chaskin
 
We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

BIRDS

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
~Henry David Thoreau
 
Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers - a living prismatic gem.... it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.
~W.H. Hudson, Green Mansions

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
~Henry Ward Beecher
 
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
~Chinese Proverb

Mansions in the sky, tethered to the wind they cry. Man cannot see eye to eye, in the beauty of the butterfly!
~Joni Zipp

Perseverance

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. 

~Walter Elliott, The Spiritual Life

***

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. In writing you need perseverance to get any place.

About nine years ago, I met many friends who were all on the same path as me. We were all in a course, learning to write to see where this dream would lead. I had already taken a two year course and as perseverance goes, I jumped into yet another writing course. This one was free, and it had many classrooms full of wanna-be writers like myself. As the classrooms waned, my love for writing didn’t.

I met this one guy, awesome writer, who was going down the road with me, and as we met with many forks in the road, our paths separated as he continued in his day job and love of carpentry, and I was moving full steam ahead in the writing world. Nine years later, we are still friends, but both on different journey’s, as all writers wind up on.

Oh he is still an excellent writer, the love and gift didn’t go anywhere but he is now embarking on becoming his own boss in the Rehab business, and this year I’ve finally said enough is enough and moved on to something else myself. Yeah, I’m taking care of ME first, then I’ll move on to teaching you all, then getting a job in the real world, pending health issues.

My New Year, which began on Easter, left me with a whirlwind of changes that will be made this year. I will persevere in getting to where I need to go and when I get there, you all will be the first to know. If I don’t persevere, then I’ll get nowhere and be in this same situation come next year! So send up some positive prayers for me as I go on and move forward.

To be a writer, perseverance in many fields needs to be acquired first. It’s not just about writing, oh no, there is a lot more to being a writer than that!

You will become an editor -- correcting and perfecting your work before it becomes publishable. Don’t think an editor does it all for you. You have to be ACCEPTED first before they tinker with your manuscript and the least amount of tinkering, the better

A Copywriter -- Yes siree, an essential tool of the writer if he is to move forward in the writing field.
 
free assistance on copywriting are found here
 
A fileclerk? You might say, “No way, not in writing.” But YES way, in writing you need to keep track of all your submissions, accepted or rejected. You’ll need to keep track of money and expenses, for tax purposes.

A negotiator -- You’ll need this skill to work in a proper fee for all your hard work. Are you gonna just accept a $500 dollar offer for your manuscript? Think about it.

A Marketer -- You need to promote YOU and your work. No one can do it for you. And since you’ve taken on the role of fileclerk, you now have the beginnings of where to start. Connect with writers, promote together. Tweet your heart out.

An assistant to other writers -- Yes, you’ll want to help OTHER writers also. Maybe offer them something in a field that didn’t fit you. Hand it off to someone who writes in that field.

With perseverance...you just might make it!

***

But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition. 

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Elements of Writing

Elements of writing

There are eight parts of speech. Can you identify them? Words are based on these eight parts of speech. They are:
noun, pronoun, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction, interjection


noun - a person, place or thing.
verb - asserts something about the subject. It is the action of the sentence.
pronoun - a substitute for a noun: he, she, it, which, etc. (tricky these pronouns are. Do your research!)
adverb - modifies a verb,  adjective, phrase or clause
adjective - modifies a noun or pronoun
preposition -  links the nouns, pronouns, phrases to other words in a sentence
conjunction -  more tricky words: but, and, or, for, so, yet
interjection - is a word added for emotion! For excitement. (Remember schoolhouse Rock) Yay! Aww... Hey! Eeek!




Pronoun cases (subjective, possessive, objective)
verb tenses: active or passive?
Can you pick out phrases and clauses? Would you know how to punctuate each?
Then there’s the punctuation usage. (Yes, I over use the exclamation mark!)


All this to become a writer? Is it even worth all the effort for you to put into it? For me it wasn’t, but for others, they’ve went on to great success in the writing world and have become published authors. I could go on and on about perseverance, and hanging in there, and push yourself to the limit. But after nine years of persevering, mentoring, teaching other folk the craft of writing, and giving my all to the writing world, it took one bad crop to spoil every ounce of hard work that I put in and now, I don’t write like I used to. I don’t really care to write anymore. No more writing site, no more writing friends and colleagues, I have within my grasp, a blog. That’s it.


Sure I love writing my blog posts, I write poetry also, but a grammarian? I have never reached that level. I wrote because I loved to write! Knowledge was a bonus, but no one is perfect. I’ll add that if you’re going for perfection in your writing, then you’re going at it all wrong.


The link provided for Grammar, gives an individual rundown on each of these essential elements. You will need to study these elements whether in a class, course, or by other means: library, internet, so that you know the proper way to write a sentence. To write a paragraph, you will surely want knowledge of how to write the sentence first. Improper usage of the words can make you appear not very knowledgeable in a field where you need knowledge.


There are many courses out there for you, whether for a fee: Writers Digest offers many seminars on writing for a costly fee, then there are sites for a low fee, but not many active classes so people run away. Then there is you, the writer; ready willing and able to go at this writing biz, full steam ahead.


My best advice is this: Find a site that suits YOUR needs. Whether you work alone on gaining grammar and writing knowledge, then post to the writing site to help you get some critical feedback, but be very careful of becoming ‘friends’ in the community setting. Just as in real life, they may be there to help you but they can also be the ones who put a halt to your dream, out of jealousy? Envy? Whatever the case may be, protect your heart before oozing it to the public, for sure you’ll meet with a dead end.

Poetry Sunday ~ Have We Forgotten

Luke 7:16 And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.


Have we forgotten?

*** 

Everyone seems to celebrate Easter
sitting at home on their keister;
gobbling down all the ham
forgotten is the Holy Lamb.

Glory to the Risen King
songs of praise to Him should ring.
For all the love and sacrifice
the blood for us should suffice.

Long forgotten is the Word
messages are never heard
We toy, we change all He taught
to fit our needs, like food for thought.

We justify all our deeds
by planting all unworthy seeds.
Are we to plant in desert soil
or boldly sow with weekly toil.

Minimize our earthly duty,
we give ourselves over to beauty.
Lame creatures, contentedly being,
shame on us for never seeing.

For me it is all praise and glory,
in my soul dwells Jesus’ story.
My soul remains entwined to His
I’m shown the truth of all Easter is.

Quotation Saturday ~ Happy NEW Year!

EASTER

Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there.
~Clarence W. Hall

The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.
~Henry Knox Sherrill

Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.
~Charles M. Crowe

On Easter Day the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer.
~Douglas Horton

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise."
~Richard Le Gallienne
 
The fasts are done; the Aves said;
The moon has filled her horn
And in the solemn night I watch
Before the Easter morn.
So pure, so still the starry heaven,
So hushed the brooding air,
I could hear the sweep of an angel's wings
If one should earthward fare.
~Edna Dean Proctor, "Easter Morning"

We live and die; Christ died and lived!
~John Stott
 
See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices...
~Charles Kingsley

God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.
~Robert South, Sermons
 
Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness.
~Floyd W. Tomkins

Easter is not the time to celebrate the Pagen holiday of bunnies, chocolate, candy and visiting a Church for the first time in the year. It is a time to celebrate life and the eternal blessing bestowed upon man from God! God is love, love God!
~ Joni Zipp

***

Today my Quotation Saturday is dedicated to Easter. I make no secrets here, I revel in Revelation of all I believe. Tomorrow, I celebrate my New Year and while some think it ‘weird’, others think. That’s right, they think!
 
Easter is not the time to think of Christ for the first time in the year, it is time to think of life, blossoming forth from the soil. It is where the dead meets the living and dances in your soul! It is a time to believe in something GREATER than your selfish self. A time to sacrifice. It may be the first time in your life you sacrifice a beer for water, ham for fish, beef for broccoli or anything worthy from your inner spirit that might not belong there. Sacrifice.
 
And if you find, that Jesus stands for everything loving, everything renewing, spiritually divine and prosperous in life and death, then you have found the Glory of God and all He is made of.

Matt. 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
 
Matt. 7: 24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
 
[26] And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
 
Matt. 10: 27 What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.
 
Matt. 13: 9 Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

May you all have a spiritually uplifting day and May God Bless you!

Happy New Year!!!

English 101

The English Language...it can get quite sticky...

Want a grammar post that’ll knock your socks off? I received this in my email the other day from a dear friend who had just read my grammar post. Coincidentally, she received this the same day I wrote my grammar post, but since I don’t believe in coincidences, this was meant for me to share with you all! :)

As much as I avoid ‘forward’ emails... I read this one, enjoyed it, and felt the need to share it with you. Aren’t you glad I don’t have all your emails and I can just blog about it? Enjoy friends!

Subject: The beauty of the English language

If you've learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius! This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. Peruse at your leisure, English lovers.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of

odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

P.S. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick


author’s note: Feel free to add your thoughts. I’d love to hear/read them.

Grammar Police

Grammar Police!

***

I thought that was a funny title since I am on so many occasions the one being ‘charged’ with the crime of  Grammar Faux Pas.
I do try my best but I found that I am human after all, I make mistakes, and I lose sight of grammar skills when I get into the Zone of writing and all grammar rules fly out the window on a catapult!

I’m not talking typo’s here, for today I’m referring to words. This week we’ll get into other aspects of grammar skills but today, words are on my mind. I was talking to a friend from church, she is a fellow writer also, and we got to talking about similar sounding words that are frequently misused or abused, should I say? Or just plain old misunderstood.

read/read --  I read the book in one day. Or  I read a lot of books in a week.

lose/loose -- I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached. 
                   My head is attached by loose threads holding it together.

wood/would --  This one seems easy enough but you’d be surprised by the writers who misuse it.
                         The wood on deck is solid oak.  
                         I would rather be somewhere else today.

its/it’s --  It’s a sunny day out there. (contraction of it is)  
              My book has a mind of its own.

desert/dessert -- The desert was not a place to be all alone in my travels.  
                         I wanted dessert after a full course meal!

coarse/course -- The material was coarse to the touch. 
                         The course at school was not fulfilling for me.

your/you’re -- Apparently this is my most abused word. I think they’re more of a typo though because I know the difference between your and you’re.
                       Did you get your hair done again?
                       You’re not going to believe this! (contraction of you are)

their/there/they’re -- Another extremely misunderstood set of words.
                       I wonder where they’re supposed to be placed?
                       Place them over there.
                       Their team won the trophy.

We have homophones -- Words which have the same pronunciation but different meanings and (sometimes) spellings.
 
homonyms -- Words which have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings.
 
and homographs -- Words which have the same spellings but different meaning and (sometimes) pronunciation.

Can you imagine coming from another country and trying to learn our language? If I’m an American and get confused, imagine someone from Argentina, Russia, or Mexico trying to write our language. Speaking it might be difficult for a foreigner but trying to spell and write the English language? That is an entire different story. (no pun intended.)

While doing research for today’s blog, I found quite a few useful sites for the writer to use as they venture down the writing road. I’m hoping to do a week long Grammar Police series but with another Omaha trip this week and it being a Holy week, we might have to run into next week, but stick with me, there sure is a lot to be gleaned in the way of knowledge for your writing endeavors. Who needs a course in college when you have a blogful of info right here at your finger tips.



Have a grate week, I mean GREAT week! (pun intended)

Poetry Sunday! Hosanna! Hosanna!

Hosanna! Hosanna!

He gave life to the dead, cleansed the impure

healed the sick, became all lepers cure.

Fed the hungry, gave sight to the blind,

revealed the innocence of a child's mind.

If you were thirsty, He gave you to drink,

Washed away sins with nary a blink;

Of his eyes we shined while light was dim

righteousness filled our cup to the brim.

Turn your cheek from the one that maims

seventy times if you burn with flames

Forgive, forget, move on I say

I’m reaching out to show you the way.

Disciples slept, while Jesus pleaded

to let him live unless he was needed.

Crying out, He returned to die

while all looked on, not batting an eye.

They rejoiced and sang; praised his name

Hosanna! Hosanna! Into town he came.

Fronds of palms were laid at his feet.

All glory to Jesus our Savior we greet.

But lo and behold this man betrayed,

was scourged and beat but never swayed!

“My Father My Father why have you forgot,

I gave them all that you said they’d have not.”

With one last breath he gave up the ghost,

shedding blood where man needed it most.

Our sins forgiven our God came as man

in a wondrous fete generations will span.

Will we remember the sacrifice made?

Can we ever honor the price that was paid?

Do we respect all things that He taught

our souls are free for sins his death bought.

My Glorious redeemer, Savior and King,

I bow with honor my soul shall sing.

Luke 23: 34  Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.