Theme Day - Doorways

It's the first day of November, and the DP Blog theme for this month is Doorways. You can see thumbnails here. As the poem I posted on Friday shows, you never can predict what will come through a door!

Favorite Podcasts: Sermons

I am something of a connoisseur of sermons, and there are many available as podcasts. Here are some of the ones I've been listening to lately.

The chapels from my alma mater are online. Maybe yours too, if you attended a college with such things as chapels? Try the college website.

So far I like the preaching at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yeah, that's where Rob Bell pastors. I kept reading about what a heretic he was so I downloaded a bunch of his sermons to see for myself. So far I haven't heard him say anything heretical. (Understand, please - I'm not saying he's never said anything heretical - but in what I have listened to, I have not heard it.) He also has lots of great guest speakers (some of whom may be heretics, for all I know, but I have heard no heresies). Find these on iTunes under Mars Hill Bible Church or go to the church website here. (And here's hoping I put enough disclaimers into this recommendation to absolve me of all blame.)

I love to listen to Andy Stanley speak. You can look for him at iTunes under North Point Ministries, or check out the church website here. And Andy's a guaranteed non-heretical, fully evangelical guy.

Saturday Review of Books

Here.

Poetry Friday: The Door

The Door

Out of it steps the future of the poor,
Enigmas, executioners and rules,
Her Majesty in a bad temper or
The red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools,

Great persons eye it in the twilight for
A past it might so carelessly let in,
A widow with a missionary grin,
The foaming inundation at a roar.

We pile our all against it when afraid,
And beat upon its panels when we die:
By happening to be open once, it made

Enormous Alice see a wonderland
That waited for her in the sunshine, and,
Simply by being tiny, made her cry.

W.H. Auden

Poetry Friday is hosted at Biblio File today.

Dress Up as a Poet

Sooner or later just about everyone has the urge to dress up as a poet, right? I got an email with some helpful suggestions and I thought I should share it with you. You can see the ideas here.

Tuesday

I went to a retreat this weekend and had a great time. I took no work with me at all and just relaxed. While I was there someone asked me about my writing. "You write every day, don't you?" she said.

"Um, no," I said, adding that I would like to be someone who writes every day, but that I'm really not.

But why not? It's clearly just something I have to make time for if it's important to me. Nobody else is going to do it for me.

So, last night I wrote a poem. Actually I didn't even write it from scratch - it was something I had worked on before, and I tinkered with it some more and "finished" it. And then kept getting up every twenty minutes to fix something else about it. I love doing that kind of messing around with a draft, but it takes time and energy that I often don't have after I've spent a couple of hours reading student drafts and responding to them. I am going to keep trying to write - perhaps not every day, but more often than I have been.

I have some students working on short stories this quarter. We have been talking about their main characters. Today I had some useful conferences with kids who have worked out details of plot - mostly gory ones. It is fun to hear their imaginings. One kid told me today that Stephenie Meyer's ideas for the Twilight saga came to her in a dream. Don't we all wish that would happen for us? A dream with all the plot details, and then fame and fortune? Yes, it would sure be nice.

Boy Year

The Book Whisperer is having a Boy Year.

Is it True?

Good stuff over at Stuff Christians Like this morning.