Fundamentalism may exist in a black-and-white world. But saying it’s full of the logical thinkers, and those outside it are in a murky cloud of gray with no sense of justice, is giving it way too much credit. I know because I used logic, and I saw colors beyond my simplistic black-on-white battle lines. It […]
Category: Personal reflections
Chesterton, Children, and the Death of Curiosity
This post has been re-uploaded as part of the Archive Restoration Project. My brain is constantly coming up with ideas and I can’t get it to stop. I was on the phone one day a few weeks back and I saw a gate. It reminded me of The Secret Garden, a book I read more than […]
A Moment I Live For
I first found it when working at camps with young children. When I was seventeen, I volunteered at a horse vaulting camp. My group was full of little girls, aged seven and eight, who had to learn how to do tricks while riding horses. One girl in my group suffered from serious phobias, including a […]
The Comfort of Books and Dreams
There’s too much pain surrounding this post to speak in general terms. I must keep it metaphysical, and perhaps it will reach a deeper level than my usual explanatory language. It’s discouraging to learn that, to quote a poet: “how you see it from where you’re sitting, it’s probably 110% different.” I’ll say it anyway. […]
Sprinklers in the Rain
Repost: this article is highly problematic – the first few sentences demonstrate how the young children in my family were traumatized and lived in fear. My response to being overwhelmed was to dissociate. I’ve preserved it because it is a good example of how I once responded to stress. Zechariah woke up disconcerted, and started […]
Birthday Post 2: Turning 21
Guys, I’m happy. Usually on my birthdays, I slip into an introspective, rather melancholy, thoughtfulness about life. Something in my mindset changed in the past year: I don’t think about dying young anymore. I still live each day as if it will be my last. But I don’t imagine some kind of heroic, tragic end so often. […]
A Lesson in Jam Writing
I’m heading up my writer’s group for the first time, and I had to lead a discussion last week. My theme: discovering the subconscious. I taught my friends a few things I’d learned about waking up my imagination before trying to describe a vivid scene, and then we practiced jam writing. My friend Evelyn, who […]
When the Heart Forces a Smile
This post was originally published October 5, 2012. For an update on how I feel about Christianity now, see the post “When God Spoke to Me.” This is part of the archive restoration project. From a young age, my mom taught me to force a smile when I don’t feel like it. She explained in simple […]
Birthday Post
While most of my restored archive posts came through Free Jinger and the WayBack Machine, not all of those were saved. This post is back online for the first time since 2016. I’ve also added some notes, six years later, in brackets. A few weeks ago, an unexpected fire put my family on pre-evacuation. This […]
The Twice-Removed Desire
This post was originally published June 22, 2012. For an update on how I feel about Christianity now, see the post “When God Spoke to Me.” This is part of the archive restoration project. Several years ago, I wanted to want to care about following God. I didn’t care about following God, and I didn’t […]