Standing my Ground

I have always been the type of writer to stand my ground on my beliefs. Sure, I know for a lot of you it is hard, but for me it is more a moral stance. I will not jump outside my domain and watch or write something I think to be immoral.

Often I am shunned for being a ‘snob’ because I set my standards so high, these are standards that I choose to live by and don’t judge you as a person for not living by. This is MY moral compass and as a woman who isn’t getting any younger, I feel it necessary to stand my ground the closer I get to being PUT in the ground.

I watch as some claim a moral compass, some claim to be a Christian but their behavior and actions speak something totally opposite. Why is that? Sometimes I sit and watch, sometimes I try to comprehend, often times I’m scratching my head wondering why I am so different. Why do I see wrongs where there are wrongs and others see wrongs as right? Am I missing something? Are you going to tell me that God DOESN’T see you betraying Him? Or do you think He’ll just overlook the tiny things?

I started this writing blog with the right intentions but watched as it flopped. Slowly being here for no one to read and even less to comment. I didn’t write to get comments, but I did write to be read. What good is writing for yourself if no one is going to read you? I think that is why I lost interest in writing. As I wrote and posted (here or other places) no one was reading me. One person to LIKE everything I write does not encourage me to continue writing.

I went from 200+ posts a year to 60 if I’m lucky 80 by years end. This isn’t the successful journey I envisioned for myself. I persevered…persisted…plowed on and in many dark tunnels I crawled out to see the light, but when I got to the end of the dark and musty tunnel, no one was there.

Sure, I’ll hear, “God is there.” I know this! “God’s on your side.” I know this too. I have so encapsulated myself with God that it has scared people off leaving me alone (not totally because I KNOW God is there) in my writing journey. Sometimes I wished the computer and internet had never come into my life and that I would have stayed the type woman that I was molded into. I left that world for the virtual world and have to wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere on the path. Granted, it was a path to meeting new friends but I wonder…

I know God has something planned for me and it’s not in the virtual social world of facebook or the extremely weird social format of Twits, I mean Twitter. It’s out here in the real world of beauty, nature and reality.

I WILL revive my writing blog perhaps come September. I WILL use my God-given talent of writing to further my goals. I WILL, I WILL, I WILL!  For now, I’ll await the season’s change so I can feel alive again. I’ll wait for the tapping of marbles rolling on the tin roof in the form of rain. The sound and the new season will revive in me what I’ve been waiting for to breathe the life of writing once again. 

I will stand my ground and firmly plant my feet in the Light of truth. My writing will soar as the eagles! I’ll do it with or without you, I have God, that’s all I need!

Poetry Sunday ~ Giving Thanks

 

Job 8: 13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish:

Giving Thanks...

 ***

For all we are and all we do

we give our thanks each day.

We live, grow, change and mend

I give my thanks and pray.

I thank my mother and father

for all the things they gave.

Within their hand they held my life

but only One could save.

I led the life He wanted for me

although the road was rough.

I never look back with any regret.

the unpaved journey was tough.

The path was laid before we were born

the forks were all in place.

Which we chose was a cosmic bend

that altered time and space.

I found a cross in my walk

as I wandered through each year.

Whimsical times and frenzied mind

He made it all come clear.

The crystal shell lay in shards

glass was torn to pieces.

He put them all together again

My love for Him never ceases!

I thank the Lord for carrying me

through life’s seasoned highway.

I’m mended now because of Him,

No longer are things done my way.

It’s His way or No WAY!

A Blogger No More

Job 13: 13 Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.

***

I know I’ve whined and moaned about this before, but something is telling me to just give it up. Why?

1) I find no joy in blogging anymore – as you can tell probably from my non-posting?

2) I don’t care to write for myself anymore – tired of pretending there’s an audience out there that likes reading me.

3) I used to find joy in blogging, sharing, comments and meeting friends: I have it no more – all has become silent like the caverns in my mind.

4) Writing has dwindled to a grocery list—and what I do write is probably taken as malicious and misguided.

5) When I find joy in writing, or have something the emptiness might enjoy, I’ll be sure to share.

I don’t like summer by any means whatsoever. I love winter, I enjoy spring and fall is a pleasant season. But summer is just a season where everybody wears next to nothing, prances around for all the voyeurs to see. It is a season of nothingness and shows people for their true colors for sure.

When I go shopping or out in public—even in the summer, my body is covered. Why? Because it is my sacred temple and it is not for people to gawk at, look down upon, or to lust after, it is my temple! Sacred!

I can’t go out and enjoy my garden because the flies think I’m the next best thing to a dead carcass, I’m there to eat. I slather my body in vanilla – which I read was good to deter flies, but when you forget to put it on, you realize that vanilla REALLY works! But then there’s the heat, the long drawn out days of heat. Lounging in the heat is no fun! The flies find the one spot you missed and gnaw at you like an over-ripe peach.

My work in the yard is not enjoyable because I need someone to start the old mower for me and with my beau working and Adam in the healing stages of a surgical procedure, it is all falling on my hands which takes a toll on my mind, body and soul. Mowing is my meditative release from this ugly world I live in.

Sure I see the beauty in each day. Wake up with a renewed love of this world as I watch the birds drink from my homemade birdbath, land on a branch and specifically tweet to me a big thank you!

But I think my long summer is drawn out by being homebound, seeing the outside world once or twice a month and when I do see it, I want to run back home and curl up on the sofa. While my man may enjoy the heat, working on Saturdays and Sundays, missing church, finding pleasure in being out and around people, and being able to shop at his leisure; I find myself in a sheltered world of no movement, shades drawn (so the sun don’t heat the house) and no AC because it costs too much.

I’m alone to do what; clean, wash clothes, my every day mundane chores? Maybe then I could write? No, writing has been sucked out of me like everything else, so I’ll just dwindle until something pulls me back into the realm of the living. For now…I’ll be a  ‘nilla zombie.

Be well people.

Pss. 102: 7 I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

Poetry Sunday ~ Isolation

Isolation

***

The house echoes of the emptiness found inside

like an unending tunnel where light is obscure.

The noise erupts with no one to confide

My lips are parched, as my heart lay pure.

Loneliness wraps my body in its outstretched arms;

nestles me in the warmth of a longing embrace.

I am alone in the silence that bears down and harms

the fullness of my being in this comely place.

The violence erupts but it is far from me

and all I can do is bow my head in prayer

as the isolation swallows my sanity

I seek to find you but you’re not there.

My only friend in sorrowful times of longing

is the empty space of my voice unheard;

Isolation traps me in the field of belonging

Left unattended with the pain I’ve incurred.

The solitude has me in its restless clutch

as no one is here to hold my hand.

I long for someone; anyone’s touch;

so alone in seclusion our beating hearts stand.

Poetry Sunday ~ Disillusion

Ps. 109:29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

Disillusion

 ***

You say you love

but do not know

the meaning of the word.

you say you care but can not bear

all things that you have heard.

You say you need

but do you know

the necessity of your own

you say you want

all things they haunt

and never make a home.

You say you see

all of me

but do you really know.

the depth and breadth

of my soul, to no one

will I show!

You try to beguile

this is true,

you are not what you seem.

You give you take

the heart of me

but will not dim my beam.

A ray of light

shines forth from me

no longer a part of the fusion.

I walked away to

a brighter day as

you wallow in disillusion.

Show vs. Tell

Joni’s going to write a blog post today.

Joni sits at her desk, pencils, paper, stapler surrounding her. A deep sigh leaves her mouth as she sits contemplating, ready to tap on the keys preparing to write today’s blog.

Aha! I think I’ll write about SHOW vs. Tell! In the first sentence I told you what Joni was going to do. In the second sentence I SHOWED you.

I often read from beginning writers, ‘What is the difference in show vs. tell?’ I read many mentor’s critiques exclaiming, ‘You need to show more than tell’.

Showing is more specific in terms as it lays out the picture for you. General terms are good when you need to tell when something is happening that is brief in the story. Whereas, showing moves the story along from point A to point B.

To tell a story, one only needs to say,

Mary went to the store.

To help in getting the picture across to your reader, the ones who are following your every word, you need to learn how to SHOW them the story.

Mary grabbed her purse, hurried out the front door to walk down to the corner store. The screen door slammed as her mother called from behind, “Don’t forget the bread.”

You can see Mary in your mind, can’t you? You no longer are holding a non-descriptive image of Mary, you now see a woman grabbing her purse and rushing out the door, only to be halted by the voice of her mother.

Think of yourself reading a book. You don’t start at the end, you begin at the first page. You take it slowly and read one page at a time so you can grasp the entire picture.

Taken out of context, you can speed read a page here and there but do you fulfill your journey of enjoyment? Showing and telling can give you the same information. But with the showing the reader gets to savor each and every word in a visual manner.

Creating a mental picture for the reader is important if you care for them enough to read to the end. Children love fairy tales where they don’t need a lot of the weighted down imagery; they get picture books to supply the images. But novels or short stories need to tap into the mental cinema of the reader’s mind.

Telling is fine for trivial things like it was a stormy day. If the storm is essential to moving the story along or part of the immediate scene then showing should be done. Don’t over do it with the imagery so no one says you’re padding your work. Showing should come as a natural flow to you.

I was sad when my dog died.

This is telling you how I felt when my dog died.

I was miserable when my dog died. It hurt so much I could just spit. I never expected him to die and now he’s left me alone and lonely for companionship.

This is padding the telling and not really showing you how I felt. You read that my dog died, I hurt, and I felt alone.

Now let me try to SHOW you how I felt.

Today I was utterly distracted when the puppies in the park were playing Frisbee, it reminded me of my Skippy. My friend for life or so I thought, until he contracted a deadly virus that took him from my life. No longer do I look at his bowls the same way as they still sit on the floor near the door.

This statement gives more specific details, without telling how I “felt”. You can read in my words that I miss him. You can read my hurt without using the word. You can read that I miss my dog and that I’m hurting just by getting the longing feeling from, “No longer do I look at his bowls the same way.”

The point of "showing" is not to drown the reader in a sea of details. Instead, you should pick out only those instrumental details that matter.

Give your reader something to hold onto. Have them frothing at the mouth waiting to read more of your pain and anguish. Give him/her a tale of beauty with ribbons of sensory and imagery. Save the telling for the hairdresser.

Give your writing some music and it will SING!

Poetry Sunday ~ Shine On

Job 33: 30 To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living.

Shine On...

My yesterdays have gone astray

they lurk forever more.

hiding behind the pain inside,

they seek an open door.

My today’s have been quite lovely

whenever I praise His name.

nothing can hold me captive;

through Him I’m not the same.

My tomorrows will be brighter

more days of sun not rain.

it’ll wash away my sorrows

driving off the inner pain.

My past is gone forever

I hold the hidden key.

On a chain around my neck

it’s locked all memory.

The future of mine has promise

as a beacon holds my gaze

I long for life within the realm

where I carry all my days.

The Lord is the comforting arms,

my strength, my shield, my rock.

I may hold the key to my soul

it is HE who made the lock!

Quotation Saturday

SYMPATHY

Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Tears are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.

~Rita Schiano

It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; 'tis rather an embrio state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals?

~Benjamin Franklin, 22 February 1756

Unable are the loved to die.  For love is immortality. 

~Emily Dickinson

SMILES

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles.  It might be the only sunshine he sees all day. 

~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Before you put on a frown, make absolutely sure there are no smiles available.  ~Jim Beggs

Every smile makes you a day younger.

~Chinese Proverb

No matter how grouchy you're feeling,
You'll find the smile more or less healing.
It grows in a wreath
All around the front teeth—
Thus preserving the face from congealing.
~Anthony Euwer

LOVE

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one's companion.”
~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Poetry Sunday ~ My Father's Daughter

My Fathers Daughter

What can I say, it happened one day

“You’re your fathers daughter.”

You like to read, do crosswords too

you’re definitely your father’s daughter.

The stubbornness the same;

Your minds think alike.

You love the mountains

and relish a good hike.

Adventuresome too

mesmerized by the water,

Yes my sweet child,

you’re your father’s daughter!

Is it so bad to be like him?

It’s where I learned my strength.

Insight to provide my freedom of mind,

that reaches immeasurable length.

No he’s not perfect, nor claims to be

he’s so much more I can say.

To illuminate my soul in a father’s role

the most ever-loving way!

Yes I’m my father’s daughter

I state it proudly so.

I may not be there, and him not here.

but he’s with me wherever I go!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, DAD!

The Opening

The Opening

Opening my mind I try to see,

the luscious land surrounding me.

Like all the flowers standing proud,

underneath a rain-burst cloud.

The fields they sprout a gushy green

whether corn or crop of soy bean.

Rows and rows in my view

I’ll share the beauty with all of you.

The sounds they call me in the night

the wicked howls of wind in flight.

Trees all mourn from daytime heat

leaves they clamor like little feet.

The pasture wakes with vibrant breath

awaiting harvest its imminent death.

Pivots roll across the land

to moisten earth with guided hand.

Fluttering petals with gracious class

all salute you as you pass,

A blade of grass can be seen

bowing down as you preen.

This place is home, with springtime flare,

a perfect place to sit in prayer.

As one door opens another closes

I’ll spend my time just smelling roses!

Quotation Saturday

Writing

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
~ Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...
...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“nothing can save you except writing.
It keeps the walls from failing.”
~ Charles Bukowski

“Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.”
~ Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”
~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”
~ Elie Wiesel

“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.”
~ Gloria Steinem

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
~ Winston Churchill

“A writer is a painter without paint, he’s a painter of words.”

~ Joni Zipp

Poetry Sunday ~ Home: Alone

Home; Alone

In my ideal world

I isolate myself from the society

that has let me down.

I run through the fields of

golden streams.

I play in the solitude of bliss.

I long to hear the sounds

of rustling leaves.

No voices to distract me;

just peace and quiet.

Even  the quiet carries a hum;

a rhythm of  cascading nothingness

that takes me to a place in my mind

where I alone can talk to God;

and He can talk back.

I yearn to be left alone.

No cares or wares for me

to treasure; just the basic

needs of food and water.

I need to be alone for it is

where God cradles me and allows

me to cry in His arms.

My eyes unleash a river

as my world gets muddled;

He caresses me as His robe is

puddled ...by my tears.

Am I home yet, Lord?

Photoshop - Believing is Seeing

Have you ever seen a photoshop picture? They can be pretty realistic can’t they? 

I was thinking about writing and how we embellish the truth, make up stories, color it with vivid imagination and call it fiction.

How come people can take beautiful pictures and get away without telling others that the photo is photoshopped? Is photoshopped even a word?

What IS photoshop?

“Photoshop is the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print, and other new media disciplines. It is embraced by millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen (such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures) has either been created or edited by Photoshop. The powerful tools used to enhance and edit these pictures are also capable for use in the digital world including the infinite possibilities of the Internet.”

With today’s technology, there are numerous things you can do with photoshop. I’ve seen pics of elephants walking on water, I’ve seen clouds turned into a monster storm-looking thunderous cloudburst, I’ve even seen Jesus in toast, clouds, trees, you name it, all thanks to the artists who can work photoshop.

If a writer took someone’s work and twisted it, and worked it into a totally different story, I do believe a lawsuit would ensue. But with pictures, it seems the norm to take someone’s picture and embellish it to their liking, put a caption on it, and maybe the original photographer doesn’t even recognize the pic as his/her own!

Now I’m not talking about someone re-inventing the Cinderella story, I think every writer has dappled with that tale as well as Snow White and many other fairytale's passed down through time. But when I see Lord of the Rings taken and re-invented into a “similar” story, boy it grates on my nerves!

We’re writer’s and we have our very own creative genius in our brains. We can create stories that might be general matches to other stories like say vampire stories. They should and WILL all be different from what is on the shelves now.

I’m so glad that photshop hasn’t found a way to doctor MY work, although, sometimes it does look like it needs a doctor. I’m just saying, as a photographer, a person works their tail off to capture beauty, the same goes for writer’s , we work very hard at our words so that we capture the beauty to tell a riveting story. A doctored pic to me says the photographer is too lazy to capture the REAL beauty and has to embellish it to make it shine.

If you’re a writer, you will not settle for anything less! You will make your work stand out and preferably stand alone. Sure magazines abuse airbrush, novel covers need a tricky photo to grab you, but writer’s? They walk along with only the English language (or whatever you speak) to carry their words.

Don’t photoshop your writing. Remember, you’re an artist of a different caliber. No technology is going to assist you in making it better. Use your talent accompanied with your mind to airbrush and dazzle, with WORDS!

Poetry Sunday ~ Grace

Grace

Darkness seeps in like a creeping fog,

drawing my energy to the pit it came from.

Sweeping my essence off the floor trying

to carry my spirit below the surface of my soul.

I stand firm with my faith as my strength

desires to be pulled in an upward flow

from an unnamed force; beckoning me

to come and be one with the Holy Grace.

I see the light shining in the far off place

I outstretch my hand in hopes that someone

grabs hold and pulls me into the warmth so

I can be free once again right where I belong.

He never left my side the whole time, standing

where I last saw Him with bright eyes shining.

Singing to my soul with the voice of an Angel

His embrace is all I ever seek in the looming fog.

Quotation Saturday

HURT

“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.”
― George R.R. Martin

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
― Haruki Murakami

“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.”
― Natsuki Takaya

PAIN

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
― Lance Armstrong

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
― Sophocles

INSULTS

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
― William Shakespeare

“I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.”
― Criss Jami

“The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect.”
― Kresley Cole

“We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.”
― Alexander McCall Smith