A to Z Blogging Challenge · Writing

I is for Imagination

Sally2 Comments

If you want to know what loving your neighbor is all about, look at them with more than just your eyes.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I recently started a writer’s group at the senior program where I work.

We’ve had two meetings, but only one person — the same person — has come each time. The last time we met I was feeling so overwhelmed with life that we hardly talked about writing until at the end when we were talking about all that’s going on these days. Something clicked in my brain.

“This,” I said, making a grandiose gesture with my arms to indicate the world in which we live, “is why writing is important. Writing helps us understand.”

It was at just such a time as this that I started this blog, although it wasn’t the country in turmoil. It was my mother’s dementia. I was having a hard time processing it.

Just like I’m having a hard time processing what’s going on today.

Writing taps into something — surely there is a word for it — that unravels the knot.

I think it has to do with imagination — with seeing with more than our eyes.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

H is for Holocaust

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It is impossible to think about it. It is impossible not to think about it. Nothing in history equals the horror of it. … Many were old men. Many were small children. Many were women. They were charged with nothing except being Jews. …

That many of the people who took part in the killings were professing Christians, not to mention many more who knew about the killings but did nothing to interfere, is a scandal which the Church of Christ perhaps does not deserve to survive.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Moving on in this (un)happy week in American history, I read this by Buechner.

I have been haunted by the images from the El Salvadoran prison and the young mother whose husband is there. A clerical error. Oops. American Christians should be hanging their heads in shame. This is not what Jesus calls us to do.

I know, I know — I heard J.D. Vance called him a vicious gang member and human trafficker. Today, as I write this, the Supreme Court has ordered the US goverment to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, yet the DoJ can’t even say where he is. No one is doubling down on the vicious gang story anymore.

Also, no one in the government has apologized to my knowledge. Probably no one ever will.

Go on — look at the photos from the prison and tell me that it doesn’t turn your stomach. Okay — it’s not old men, women, and children, but’s it’s still wrong. This is what we as a country have done.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

G is for Government

Sally3 Comments

We need government to collect taxes, keep the roads in repair, maintain order in the streets, justice in the courts, etc., but we certainly don’t need this. They don’t pay us, we pay them, yet they’re the one who call the shots while the rest of us stand by with our knees knocking.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Buechner wrote this book in 1988. I read this quote on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, when our government-country-world was in the throes of financial chaos. All because of the capriciousness of one man.

Here’s more of what Buechner said,

On both sides of the Iron Curtain, in Islam as well as in Christendom and the Third World, they have their conflicting political systems, ideologies, and holy causes to be sure, but by and large they give the strong impression of wanting little more than a chance to raise their children as best they can, keep the wolf from the door, have some fun when they’re through working at the end of the day, find some sort of security against old, and all such as that.

Their leaders, on the other hand, are continually delivering ultimatums to each other, plotting to confound each other any way they can manage it, spying on each other, vilifying each other, impugning each other’s motives, spending billions on weapons to destroy each other, and all such as that.

If at this most basic level, governments don’t reflect the dreams of the people they govern or serve their wills, you wonder what on earth governments are. … They seem to have a life and purpose of their own quite apart from the lives and purposes of anybody else. They are perpetually locked in desperate struggles with each other that have little if anything to do with the general human struggle to live and let live with as little fuss as possible. It’s we ourselves who have given them the power to pull the whol world down on all our heads, and yet we seem virtually powerless to stop them.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

F is for Family

Sally3 Comments

The Human Family. It’s a good phrase, reminding us not only that we come from the same beginning and are headed toward the same conclusion but that in the meantime our lives are elaborately and inescapably linked. …

It’s not so much that things happen in a family as it is that family is the things that happen in it. The family is continually becoming what becomes of it. …

It is within the fragile yet formidable walls of your own family that you learn, or do not learn, what the phrase Human Family means.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

This is where my A-to-Z fell apart. I had planned to use a Buechner quote and make a tiny collage — about 2×2 inches. I totally misjudged how hard it would be to make those little collages every day. It was on this day — Family — when I struggled the most.

How do you fit a family into 2×2 inches? My immediate family is large: 8 children, 6 spouses/significant others, 5 grandchildren (one more on the way). I have three living siblings. Then, there are aunts and uncles and cousins. There are also friends who are as close as family. There are co-workers with whom I spend more time than anyone else so they might as well be family.

“The family is continually becoming what becomes of it…” My immediate family is in flux, with big changes at its core. It hurts to think about them.

But I do. I do think about them and the people deeply affected by it all.

That 2×2 can’t hold the bigness of it.

I think I’ll stick with words from here on out.

Uncategorized

Two Voices

Sally8 Comments

Hey kiddo!
[blah, blah, blah, ditto, ditto]
You’re not even listening but–
What?!

I listen!
You go on about this sin
And that sin — What? I have not
Got

Time — Excuse,
Excuse, excuse! Please produce
Evidence! Evidence? I
Try

To explain —
You’re not listening again.
I found the wrapper! [big eyes,
cries]

You’re busted.
The sad thing is I trusted
You. Sorry, Mom. C’mere, bug —
{{{{hug}}}}

This is my attempt at the W3 challenge this week. Poet of the Week Violet (congrats, Violet!) challenged us to write a poem in two voices.

  • Two voices. Two perspectives. Tension lingers in the air.
  • Can they find common ground? Will the conversation spark understanding or fracture further?
  • You decide.
  • Write a poem—any form, or none at all—that captures the heart of a difficult conversation.

This is an Irish form – Deibide Baise Fri Toin – that I’m slowly figuring out. 3-7-7-1 syllables. Line 1 and 2 rhyme on two syllables, lines 3 and 4 rhyme on one.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

D is for Darkness

Sally1 Comment

The original creation of light (Genesis 1) itself is almost too extraordinary to take in. The little cook-out on the beach (John 21) is almost too ordinary to take seriously. … Only a saint or a visionary can begin to understand God setting the very sun on fire in the heavens, and therefore God takes another tack. By sheltering a spark with a pair of cupped hands and blowing on it, the Light of the World gets enough of a fire going to make breakfast. It’s not apt to be your interest in cosmology or even in theology that draws you to it so much as that empty feeling in your stomach. You don’t have to understand anything very complicated. All you’re asked to do it to take a step or two forward through the darkness and start digging in.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

fiction

A Teachable Moment

Sally11 Comments

The teacher set the pile of over-sized photographs on his desk. He picked up the first one and showed it to the class.

“Okay, students. Who can tell me what this is?” he asked.

Susie raised her hand. The teacher pointed to her and she said, “That’s a church!”

The teacher beamed. “That’s right,” he said, pointing to the steeple and the cross.

He held up the next photograph. “Who can tell me what this is?”

Joey blurted out, “Grocery store!”

The teacher nodded and said, “That’s the correct answer, Joey, but please remember to raise your hand.” He pointed out how to identify it as a grocery store — the advertisements in the windows, the shopping carts outside.

Next was a mosque, correctly identified by Kalil. The teacher pointed out the minaret.

He worked his way through the pile. A school — with yellow buses in front. A restaurant — with outside diners. A gas station — with pumps. The students identified each one.

Finally, he held up this photograph:

Silence. Finally Ethan said, “I know where is it. Does that count?”

The teacher said, “Can you tell the class where it is?”

Ethan gave detailed directions to the building, but added, “My dad told me to stay away from that part of town.”

The teacher ignored his last words. “You can all come visit me here over the summer. I have a special place to show you but it has to be our secret. Come in this door and call my name.”

This is my submission to the Unicorn Challenge. It feels creepy and yucky — so I apologize ahead of time. I had no idea what it was a picture of — and my mind went to creepyland. I watch too many crime shows!

The Unicorn Challenge has two rules: 1) No more than 250 words, and 2) use the photograph as a prompt.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

C is for Chanting

Sally4 Comments

Words wear out after a while, especially religious words… When a prayer or a psalm or a passage from the Gospels is chanted, we hear the words again… We remember that they are not only meaning but music and mystery. … Of course, chanting wears out after a while too.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

One of my children said that when people pray prayers together in a service they sound like robots. I suppose it could sound that way.

I like how Buechner refers to them as music and mystery.

They are polished rocks, made smooth and beautiful by time and use.

poetry

Talking to Martin Hopkins

Sally12 Comments

Hey, Martin!
I am angry! Disheartened —
Kept that dory near your boat
[FLOAT!

GOD DAMMIT!}
You know, we ran the gamut
Of Nantucket fishing holes
Shoals

I’m waiting —
Waiting — we should be baiting
Trawling hauling up some catch…
Scratch

That daydream!
Sitting on this pier, sunbeam
Flickers on the water, but
What?

What happened?
You’re gone. I tip my cap and
Move on. But, brother, I cry
Why?

This is my response to the W3 prompt by Leslie Scoble. (Congrats, Leslie!)

The prompt: Write a monologue poem in which a character—historical, fictional, or original—takes center stage. Step into their voice and let them speak. Who are they, and whom are they addressing? Reveal their personality through their words, tone, and actions.

  • Set the Scene – Your character must be seated on a bench. It could be a park bench, a courtroom seat, a workbench, or even the dreaded school “naughty bench.”
  • Use Subtext – What remains unsaid is just as important as what is spoken. Let hidden emotions or unspoken truths add depth.
  • Engage the Audience – Though alone, their words should feel directed at someone or something—whether a specific listener, a memory, or the universe itself. 
  • Finish Strong – End with a revelation, a twist, or a lingering thought that leaves an impact.

This is loosely based on some family history of my great-grandfather, Martin Hopkins, who was a Nantucket fisherman who died when his schooner went down in a storm in 1899.