Inspirations and Illuminations

Today was hard.  I wasn't completely unprepared, because I've seen the signs over the last year or so, but the news today of Dolly Parton's death really hit hard.  Her influence over the last seven decades has been so far-reaching, it's impossible to imagine a world without her in it.  Dolly has done so much good, and has spread so much light and joy and imagination and music, that countless generations to come will feel her impact even if they don't know who she was. Dolly has been part of my life since the beginning.  My grandpa and dad were huge country-western fans.  They were old-school:  Johnny Cash, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn and her sister Crystal Gayle, Conway Twitty, Marty Robbins, Charley Pride, Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, and Don Williams, among so many others.  And Dolly Parton.  The first song I actually remember from Dolly was a Bee Gees song:  "Islands in the Stream."  But a...

I love trees.  I feel a strong connection to trees.  I've always loved looking at them, sitting in their shade, climbing them.  Growing up, I have fond memories of the trees we had.  In our front yard, we had a beautiful white birch tree.  I loved to peel the papery bark of that pure white trunk.  Sadly, it got a common disease and we had to cut it down.  In the back yard, we had several trees--a locust that left its seeds everywhere to come up as little shoots all over; a weeping willow that my parents hated (I'll come back to that); a redbud that was perfect for climbing and enabled us to jump the fence into the parking lot next door.  At my own home, we have a Rose of Sharon that yields hundreds of white blossoms every year.  We planted a crabapple tree several years ago, and someone must have tossed an apple core into our yard, because now there's an apple tree taking over the crabapple.  It was this tree that became "my tree" when I...

This morning, our worship service opened with "When Morning Gilds the Skies."  Each Sunday, before the service begins, I scan the worship bulletin, opening the hymnal to the first hymn, writing the title of the sermon and the scriptures in my sermon notebook, and getting an idea of the flow of the service.  When one of my favorite hymns is in the bulletin, it gives me something to look forward to; when there's a hymn printed, it's usually a familiar tune with new lyrics that better follow the theme of the service than the original lyrics, but sometimes it's something completely unfamiliar to me, and I can sing (or whistle) through it ahead of time so I know what's coming.  On occasion, though, my response is, "Oh, great."  There are some songs I just can't stand, for whatever reason.  Sometimes it's because the words are meaningless or confusing to me.  Sometimes it's because the melody is practically unsingable.  Other times, it's be...

I'm in the middle of watching Steel Magnolias for the xth time.  There's a soft spot in my heart for this movie.  It came out when I was in college, in very-small-town Illinois.  At the time, there were only two theaters at our local movie house, and movies were cheap.  So I saw a lot of movies at that time, and Steel Magnolias is one that is burned into my memory.   First of all, there were only five people in the theater for this showing, all of us students at (then) Lincoln Christian College.  Four of us were girls, and one was the boyfriend of one of the girls.  It always feels special to be one of only a few at a movie, and this was an unexpected treat.  The movie was great, and we all left the theater reciting lines, like "He doesn't know whether to wind his butt or scratch his watch," or "Hit her!" or "If you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me" or "I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mo...

Today is day 85 in a row I've written something intentional.  I started at the beginning of Lent, using the United Methodist Church's Lenten Word-of-the-Day.  Starting on Ash Wednesday, I wrote daily reflections on the words, usually with a spiritual bent, and included a stock photo evocative of the word or concept.  Some days the words flowed easily, filled with alliteration and imagery, surprising myself with the insights that just came to me with very little effort.  Some days were a struggle, with verbs that would have been better in their adjective form, or plurals that would have been easier to write about in the singular; or words that I needed the dictionary to clarify.  The thesaurus was my best friend, and many times song lyrics said it better than I could.  Ultimately, though, I found I really enjoyed the discipline, and have continued it in the weeks since Easter, coming up with my own topics or words some days, and getting input from friends fo...

Here's a special little insight into my life:  I don't sleep well.  I mean, I'm not good at sleeping.  55 years on the planet, and I still can't seem to get it.  It's not full-on insomnia.  I can sleep, and I sleep deeply, but I just don't sleep very long at a time.  If I turn out the light at 9, I'm awake between 3 and 4.  The alarm is set for 5, but I rarely need it unless I happen to fall back asleep after 30-40 minutes of being awake.  And usually I don't.   So this morning, I woke up at around 4 and got on my tablet to do today's Wordle.  Facebook was up, so I briefly checked a couple of things before moving over to the NYT site.  No internet.  Weird.  I checked my Wi-Fi, tried to turn it off and back on, but nothing.  No problem, I can play my logic puzzles and see if the internet comes back in a little bit.   A couple minutes after I noticed the internet was down, I heard the sounds of a big truc...

Trigger warning:  I'm not all that keen on the Beatles.  There.  I said it.  I'll go one step further:  I think they're mostly overrated.  Don't get me wrong, they did some pretty great songs, and there's no question how influential they were on the music scene at the time, all the way up to today.  They were a boy band, but unlike those of the 90s, they actually played their own instruments.  They wrote their own stuff.  And they were ridiculously prolific, especially considering how short a time they were together.  Like, crazy prolific.  But, in my humble opinion, for every great song they produced, there were probably three that were "meh" at best and pretty crappy at worst.   And, of course, the end of the Beatles paved the way for Paul McCartney and Wings.  Now there's a band I can get excited about.  I remember hearing "Band on the Run" on the radio when I was a kid, and seeing the scene in the James Bond ...

It's the first morning of 2026.  For many of us, the start of a new year is the opportunity to shake off the dust from the previous year, and to look forward with hope to the promise of a clean slate.  It's like opening a new notebook, with all those blank pages and the possibilities they represent.  We resolve to get fit, to learn something new, to be different and better.  We choose a word of the year, with the idea that everything we experience in that year will in some way reflect that word in a positive way.   Frankly, most of the time, none of that pans out.  I don't remember what my word of the year was for 2025, although I'm sure if I go back to my first blog of the year it'll be there.  I probably had several goals for 2025, but the only one I achieved was to read at least 52 books in the year (I did 63, plus the short Bible books I didn't count in the number).  I didn't finish any cross stitch projects except the yearly Christmas or...

My Bible reading this morning is from 1st Kings, and includes chapter 19, verses 11-12.  In the NIV (New International Version), it says: "'The Lord said [to Elijah], "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."' "Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire came a gentle whisper." There is so much to unpack in this passage.  Some versions translate the first part to the effect of "I [the Lord] want you to see Me"; or "I want you to be there when I pass by."  I love the idea that God wanted Elijah to be close to Him.  So often we think of God being out there somewhere, in the heavens (which, of course, is in outer space).  Our id...

"Do you ever feel like a plastic bag Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Do you ever feel, feel so paper-thin Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in? Do you ever feel already buried deep? Six feet under screams, but no one seems to hear a thing?" Yes, Katy Perry, I do.  Maybe it's because we seem to have skipped over most of fall and gone right to winter this year (I measure this by the amount of time between air-conditioning and heating the house).  Maybe it's the time change, which affects me more negatively every year, mentally and physically.  Maybe it's because after almost 20 years in the same job, and only a little over a year in my current one, I haven't quite rediscovered my place in the world.  Maybe it's seeing my daughters grow up, the younger who just turned fourteen a couple days ago and the older who will be nineteen this weekend and is in her first year of college.   Maybe it's none of these things, and I'm ju...

I was looking through a journal entry from last year, and it made me laugh.  I was working through some journal prompts, hoping for inspiration, and thinking that if I could at least write something, it would be better than nothing.  That day's prompt was to write a rhyming poem about a poem, and here's what I came up with: A poem is something you write About trees or your love or the night And after it’s finished, Imagination diminished, You sit back and hope it don’t bite. © Pamela Roy Howell, 2024 I've never been much of a fan of writing poetry.  Honestly, I'm not all that crazy about reading most of it.  There are a few that I enjoy, mostly written by Shel Silverstein or Ogden Nash.  A couple might be favorites simply because I can say that I have them memorized:  "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost and "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson.  In general, though, if there's not a melody, poetry is not my favorite genre...

Today is my last day of being 54.  At 2:28 tomorrow morning, my odometer flips to 55.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  40 was traumatic.  I cried a lot.  At 45 I still had a little one to navigate through growing up and finding herself in the world, so my focus was anywhere but the number I had to put on forms.  50 happened during the whole COVID mess.  Disappointing that this milestone had to go by without the celebration I'd been looking forward to.  And now 55.  I'll say all the things everyone says, because, why not:  I don't feel a day over 30 (except for that pinched nerve in my back that just happened while I was brushing my teeth this morning).  If 50 is the new 40 then 55 is the new 45, right?  Maybe in terms of life expectancy, but 50 is still 50.  I'm growing old gracefully, embracing the wrinkles (laugh lines) and gray hair (silvery sparkles), but I did go pink for awhile earlier this year.  My memory...

I'm feeling out-of-sorts this morning.  This last couple of weeks have been exhausting (I'll get to that in a minute), and I think it all hit me today.  I set my alarm for 5 a.m. every day, but I'm usually awake by 4:30 at the latest, so I have time to do the New York Times Wordle, Connections, and Mini before I get up.  A little brain wake-up before the shower and coffee do the rest.  This morning, the alarm woke me at 5, and I realized I'd slept "wrong"--my head felt like it was going to explode.  So I snoozed, as per usual, but my alarm clock has a mind of its own:  the alarm went off again after three minutes instead of nine.  I stayed in bed for another couple of minutes, wondering if the headache would cease once I got up and moving.  So I did, and it did.   The shower and the coffee are being put on administrative leave, because they are just not doing their jobs today.  I feel fuzzy.  Does that make sense?  Does an...

It's been a while since I last felt I had something to say.  I'm not really sure what I want to say, but I feel compelled to write, so here I am.  Dear Lord, guide my thoughts from my head to my fingertips.  If I can't be eloquent, at least let me be coherent.  Help me to say what someone else needs to hear, in the name of your precious Son, Jesus. The other day, I started listening to Margaret Becker again.  I never go very long without listening to her music, because I find that she says what is so often in my own heart.     "Who am I, Jesus, that You call me by name?"     "May I never grow so strong my heart cannot be moved . . ."     "Calling for deeper love, calling for higher truth, calling for anything that leads me deeper and farther on with You."     "You remain unchanged, unchanged." So many of her songs speak of longing.  Wanting something more . . . meaningful, more satisfying, more fulfilling.  Yearn...

Don't you love it when you read or watch something for the umpteenth time and notice something different?  To me, that's kind of THE test of the quality of a book or movie, that not only do I find it deserving of experiencing multiple times, but that it speaks to me differently at different times, and new things capture my attention or make me think of something in an unexpected way.  It's like an old friend you see for the first time in many years--there's the beautiful familiarity of the relationship as it was, coupled with the life each experienced in the intervening years, and the accompanying maturity each has achieved.   My reading today did that for me.  The last three weeks have been hard.  Watching insecurity manifest itself in self-centered power grabbing and metaphorical kneeling on the necks of the already-oppressed has left me starving for reason, for peace, for justice.  Ambition joined to competition, greed, and aggression is simply exha...

 Good morning!  A little disclaimer:  I have to get my things together to go to work in just 25 minutes, so that's my time limit to write this little musing.  So I may not do much editing this time.  Let's just see how it goes (24 minutes left . . .) I try to do a little Bible reading every day.  Depending on how I sleep the night before, snoozing a couple more times may be a better way to prepare myself for the day (complete honesty here), so sometimes it's in the evening, and some days I just don't get to it.  I read a little devotional and then take the passage of scripture and read it several times, in several versions, to help the message sink in.  When I did yesterday's reading, it stuck out to me as an idea that would be good for anyone to espouse, not only those of us who try to follow the teachings of the Bible.  It's from the first letter of the apostle Peter:  "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve ot...

I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with the idea of decluttering.  I've subscribed to a few email lists about simplicity, living simply, minimalism, and decluttering, and enjoy gleaning the ideas in an effort to simplify my own life, to declutter.  I like to read books about things like Swedish Death Cleaning (that's really a thing, and if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it), making life simpler, and time-saving hacks.  I think when most people hear the word "minimalism," they think of getting rid of all one's possessions, and sleeping on the floor.  Talk about living simply, and the mental picture is of the Amish or a "hippie" commune.  It's usually about stuff.  Physical stuff.  Eliminating the stuff you already have and reducing the stuff you acquire.   I also think a lot about the word "enough."  I made a bracelet at a women's retreat last year, and after agonizing over designing the perfect bracelet decided it sh...