Magical Memoir Moments
What Are Your Memoir Questions?
One of my blogging friends, Sonia Marsh, (http:gutsywriter.blogspot.com) introduced me to a Mennonite blogger from Paraguay, Betty Wiens (http:bettywiens.com). I am grateful for the connection and recommend both blogs to you, dear reader. Betty Wiens did something on her latest series of posts that I would like to try. She polled her readers: what would…
Memoir and the Beautiful Sentence: Lenten Season Thoughts
My Lenten season reading this year includes Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s extended meditation on the prayer of St. Patrick. I have written about Marilyn in previous blogs and have read several books of her poetry. My appreciation continues to grow for her spiritual and literary wisdom as I read more of her work. Christ, My Companion…
Does Facebook Cause Vanity? A Memoir Dilemma
One of my Facebook friends, Karin Larson Krisetya, a former Goshen College student now a graduate student and young mother living in Indonesia, recently noted wryly that she had search through 63 photos before finding one good enough for her profile. She wonders if Facebook causes vanity. Here’s her explanation to her friends about trying…
The Frugal Traveler: A Mini-Memoir
The pattern started on our honeymoon, 1969, 40 years ago. Stuart had $600 in his checking account when we got married. I spent all the money I earned that summer– the summer of my 21st birthday, the summer of Woodstock and the moon landing, and the summer of our wedding– on the wedding dress, flowers,…
Let Your Life Speak: A Memoir Writer’s Memoir
Parker Palmer turned 70 years old today. I celebrated his birthday by re-reading his book Let Your Life Speak. I took the memoir lens in hand and went searching for how Parker uses his life story in this book. The code on the back jacket cover says “spirituality/work life” not “memoir.” But what if we…
Parker Palmer on Bill Moyers Journal: Ground On Which It's Safe to Stand
If you missed Parker Palmer’s appearance on Bill Moyers Journal last Friday, cheer up. Here it is. Apparently, the broadcast about illusion and reality in our current economic crisis, which included Parker talking about depression in his own life, cheered many people. Funny how truth does that–in just the paradoxical way that Parker himself explains…
Here If You Need Me: A Profoundly Beautiful Love
This weekend I read two memoirs: one from a Mennonite doctor who spent a year in Somalia as a medical missionary and one from a Unitarian Universalist minister who is a chaplain in Maine. Neither of these topics may sound like scintillating reads, but both of them were. The book about the Mennonite doctor will…
This American Life: What Has Kept You Together?
If the 21st century is the memoir century, then the job of this blog is to catalogue, comment, and critique. In the next weeks, you can expect to see more posts about the uses of memoir in the media world, whether that world is “mainstream,” “social media,” book publishing, online publishing, radio, television, film or…
A Memoir that Awakens the Spiritual Version of the American Dream
This morning, as is our habit, my husband and I attended Skyridge Church of the Brethren. Our pastor Debbie preached about healing, using as a lectionary text Psalm 30, the one that promises, in the majestic language of the King James Bible, that “weeping endureth for the night but joy cometh in the morning.” This…
Six-Word Memoir Valentine's Day Special
If you have not yet discovered the joy of the six-word memoir, here’s a past post that will fill you in–a lecture at Google by the authors of this book: And if you missed this week’s long NPR segment on six-word memoirs on love and heartbreak, here’s the link that will take you there. Below…