Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
Psalm 42:5, NASB
Christianity
Take a Break (from the Writing)
I am a strong proponent of establishing and keeping a writing practice. I am an equally strong advocate for taking a break from it. Rest is needed, no, required.
How to Overcome Discouragement
A writer is not a writer because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. — Junot Diaz
How to be Patient in the Gap
To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stand unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, “The Third Letter”
The Approval Gods
Perfect love casts out fear. It also casts out the need to prove my worth. Worth isn’t found in performance and approval. It’s found in resting, in being.
Running the Metaphor
Sometimes, you end up running the metaphor. The rain starts to fall, externalizing, echoing the heart’s aches. It drums against the body, perhaps a soft, warm brush against skin or staccato. Hard, abrupt, cold.