True

Cornelis Monsma

Healed

May all your wishes for the New Year

come true.

Any Sky Watchers Out There?

Now that the holidays are calming down a little, and you've had a chance to think about it, did you get what you wanted out of Christmas? Or Chanukkah?

I got to see the smiles of everyone I got a gift for. I sent out almost all the cards I hoped. It seems there's always a few people that I think of after the fact.

I even sent an email card this year. It was really cool. If you haven't seen it, you should go there now...

http://ecard.ashland.edu/2004admission/index.html

Curious?

"People without curiosity are like houses without books:

there's something unsettling about them."
Nikki Gemmell in "Cleave"

I've been designing furniture with books in mind. We have so many, there isn't one room in our house without them. I thought outside the bookshelf and designed a couch with arms to accomodate book storage, seats that flip up to store books in, and across the back of the couch, a book shelf or three.

It isn't the kind of furniture you move out of the way with your hip.

It took me 25 years, but I'm finally down to one vice.

Books.

Thoreau

If thou art a writer, write as if the time were short,

for it is indeed short, at the longest.

~Henry David Thoreau

Have You Set New Goals?

If you're like me, you managed to reach a few goals this year. In reflection, it's been a blessed year despite the negatives that occurred. It only magnified to me how much God shows up in my life everyday.

I write goals, not resolutions. The difference is that goals are like the rails on which the new year will track. Even if my 'car' doesn't move that day, the goal is there the next day. My yearly goals fit in with longer range goals, which if you haven't written them down, it's a good time to do so.
I have goals for spiritual, mental and physical as well as work and play.

Maybe I'll make it to an artist retreat one of these days. Maybe I'll get to be on the set of a movie I wrote one day, and revisit New Mexico...

I accomplished a few bonus things this year: an honorable mention for Alyce Times One, succeeding at NaNoWriMo, and my own writer's group with very inspiring people that I really respect.

I think I did alright, considering how my year began.
Here's what I have so far...

1. Take bigger risks.
2. Dare to get an agent.
3. Write something new everyday
4. Read half the books you already bought (before buying new books)
5. Tweak or finish one essay a week from the "Needs Work" file
6. Use work out strategy everyday.

I have a few more of course, I have to keep a few things a mystery. But how about you? Do you know what you expect to accomplish next year?
What are your goals?

Merry Christmas

Best Gift

If I never got another gift in my life,

I have been blessed more than a great many people.

I am grateful to those who shared the most precious gift with me.

Jesus.

No matter what happens on this earth,

what ill befalls me, it gets better after this.

Christmas in Focus

You knew it was coming, didn't you? My anti-Santa blast for the year? Sam and I kicked him out years ago and life has been good ever since. Sam may well have never understood his part in the holidays because we didn't promote him as the focus.

And he still isn't.

If I want to focus on a Sainted Bearer of Packages, my local post office, UPS and FEDEX get my vote. This showing up once a year with all the goods doesn't really get your name in my book.

When I consider story telling and the power of myth attached to even a small grain of truth, it proves true that we remember good tales evenif they're false.

Truth is, a story of a benevolent guy filling stockings would go largely unnoticed in today's society. What happens in Germany, didn't stay there. Why?

If I could have anything I wanted in this life, I'd ask for St. Nick's PR man.

Let It Snow

Keep warm!

What is Your Best Gift?

Some of us have been giving gifts a long time. Some years we manage to get the one thing our loved ones really wanted.

Many years ago, my daughter's  father and I sent a gift to an extended family member whom I had never met. When it arrived, she called to tell us how insensitive and impersonal the gift had been. I was horrified by the ingratitude. Clearly not subscribers of the philosophy, it's the thought that counts.

I think about one of the pastors at my church. He buys his wife gifts every year and then after ward, they review the gifts. He has a knack for getting the wrong thing. He admitted that he chokes almost every year. I keep hoping he'll tell us a story about giving her the perfect gift.

A couple of married acquaintances in Florida drove each other crazy by taking back every gift the other bought them.

I like to give. I came from a large family that believed in making gifts and investing your self in them with one's time and talent.

"Those are the gifts people remember," my dad said. I didn't have a lot of money, but I tried to give one gift that might last--I made Christmas cards for my friends. (I heard later that many people saved them.)

I like to give so much that I forget that others like to give to me. When people give me gifts, I am always always surprised because I never expect them.To the exasperation of my famly, my lists are usually short. Maybe it comes from years of being a single mom and being grateful for every little thing, a phone call from some one remembering you, a card in the mail, a hug.

I'm blessed and grateful no matter what I get. I cherish the time I get to have with people. I believe it's the thought that counts. At the top of my list of blessings I count my family and friends. The ones who believe in me. I believe spending time with one another still matters.

Ten Holiday Questions

1. During the holiday season, how do you spend your time?
We wrap a lot of gifts and have friends over.

2. Do you make holiday crafts with your family?
Sometimes we make ornaments.

2. Is there a signature item you always bake,make or prepare?
I used to make toffee until I gave up sugar. Now I bake banana nut bread.

4. Do you call distant family and friends?
Call a sister and brothers and one friend.

5. Do you go to lots of parties?
Not usually. Traveling is pretty dicey.

6.Do you like to cook? If so what?
Love to. Dinner with all the trimmings is my specialty.

7. Do you address and mail out Christmas or Hanukkah cards?
Mostly Christmas cards.

8. What is your most memorable Holiday?
I have several, but spending a little Christmas with both of my daughters together was one I'll cherish.

9. What made it special?
I had just made contact the month before with my eldest daughter after giving her to adoptive parents 23 years before.

10.Did you get a special gift?
Yes, Her prescence.

What Are Your Favorite Tunes?

I am partial to Kenny G's version of the Chanukah song. I really don't think there's enough songs out there Celebrating Hanukkah on mainstream radio. (Unless you count Adam Sandler's version.)

My daughter tells me every year that she just HAS to hear "Chestnuts", the original version by Nat King Cole, or it isn't a good year. She never seems to tire of it, or Paul Mc Cartney's A Wonderful Christmas Time... this one's for Sam...

If one song really makes it for me, is just about any rendition of I'll be Home for Christmas, even though I haven't been able to for over twenty years. But I am a huge Michael Buble fan... enjoy.

It Wouldn't Be Christmas Without...

For me, it wouldn't be Christmas with out The Holy Entourage...Twinkle lights and...



...Seeing The Snowman at least once...


and I can be anywhere to celebrate, including the tropics,
a caribbean yacht, the beach,
as long as they don't forget the music !




What can't you live with out at Christmas?

How Do You Keep Warm?

Where Do You Cast Your Benevolence?

Toward the starving children?

The homeless?

Do you know a single mother?

Do you remember our soldiers?

Our elderly?

What Kind of Lights?

When it comes to decorating, how do you illuminate?

Shout Out to NM

Wishing a Merry Christmas to my Westy girls...

Where Do You Like to Be?

In the woods...in the city...

On the coast...

In the desert?

What Makes Holidays Great?

Is it snow...?

Old World?

What makes it Christmas for you?

Religious?

What do you celebrate?

Modern?

How do you decorate for the holidays?

A Few Trees

Although I had my doubts about how the holidays would go this year, this Season is turning out to be strangely comforting in many ways. It helped that it snowed. Tiny little crystals all day long.

I like powder snow. It's easy and fast to shovel. I liked thinking that quite possibly my writer friend Kim and her son laying in their yard making snow angels. I like thinking if the sun came out for any length of time, it would all disappear like cotton candy on the tongue.


I'm not so fond of the red
and green since my mall decorating days.
I prefer the blue/purple and gold/silver of Hanukkah.

But I love the lights. I think my favorite time of day in winter is after sundown before Christmas. It almost looks like a skyful of stars has landed on earth.

Good Will Toward Women

It's the holiday season, Christmas is on it's way. I expect shoppers to be rude, I expect to get cut off in traffic, I expect someone to say Happy Holidays everywhere I go, even when I insist that it's Christmas.

I even expect snow to fall.

What I do not expect is people to be pleasant, for complete strangers to give gifts to strangers in a public place or to find a clerk that is willing or able to help me find items on my list.

But that's what I saw.

In Bath and Body Works, a Black woman gave a White woman a coupon good for a home fragrance oil, a seven dollar value. It blessed like a gift from heaven.

Smaller stores weren't as crowded and a clerks came out from behind her glass counter barricade to help me find at item we'd hunted for in two other stores. And then tossed in a few free samples as stocking stuffers.

Surprise!

I was blessed! I guess I just wanted to tell you, it's not all bad out there.

Spread random joy. It's contagious!

winter night

Great shot Jerry. I think about a night some 2ooo years ago with one amazing star in the sky. I've been watching the alignment of two stars in the southern night sky. Wondering of there would ever be another night light so strong to let us know that He is coming....

Go Fish@ Christmas

There are things that I'm willing to let slide, what you think of immigration, who you want to vote for and whether or not a person's sexual orientation is ordained at birth.

Then December hits and one thing only matters to me. The coming of Christ, His birthday. What he sacrificed so that we could gain.

You want to believe in your God, I want to believe in mine.

You can wish me well in your language and I will wish you well in mine.

I don't have a problem if you want to celebrate your holidays, why do you have a problem with mine?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!!

Roots

French Christmas

Whether you are near or far,

I hope you are keeping warm with love ones,

remembering good times,

and counting your blessings.

Sparkle

Reverent Awe