Spreading Christmas Cheer by Ruth Bonetti

‘Tis the season to be jolly. 

Define jolly:
"Someone who is happy and cheerful in their behaviour. Synonyms: bright, funny, lively."

Let's celebrate the season...

Rather than focus on the day. After all, December 25 owes some poetic license to monks and Roman calendars. Let’s value and enrich time with loved ones, whatever the date. 

Lifeline help calls peak over the festive season. Credit cards max. Many over-indulge and over-imbibe. 

Hair fractures can split relationships. Split families haggle over time—quantity amid hopes for quality. Trying to prove and outbid love by choosing ideal gifts, aided by Chinese sweat shop imports.  As families scatter across the globe, offspring spread their wings into their own nests, Christmas can become fraught with in-law negotiations. 

This time last year I told how such scattering of dates meant we shared our home on Christmas day and dinner with four unattached, grateful people. Thank God for prompting me to ask my son “Can you think of anyone at a loose end who’d like to come?” Indeed, he did. Glad you suggested it. 

He brought his mate –let’s call him Jack—who was alienated from his family, whose colleagues didn’t understand his offbeat wit. Shunned by peers jealous of his formidable musical genius. 

We invited another lonely soul who struggled to form and keep friendships. Again an exceptional talent, but given little credit or encouragement for that. Bad experiences had recycled, spiralled to trigger action fight or flight responses that further alienated others. We’d done our best to support him through workplace bullying, not too overt for the boss wielded the cutting word axes.

Jack could talk for hours on any topic; philosophy, physiology, ornithology, religion (and misuse of it), the state of the world. After-life or nothing-after. His sharp mind played with ideas, his nimble fingers played anything that made sounds. In rehearsals Jack’s deadpan black humour sometimes got people off-side. Why should he care? He didn’t fit into institutions, didn’t want to. No boxes could contain him.  Jack spoke his mind–too well. Just as that sharp tongue slashed through staccato riffs. 

And six months later he died.
How tragic that Jack’s alienated family didn't organise a funeral to farewell friends, to celebrate his life and gifts. They didn’t give him the time of day, even one hour. But we gave him his day. 

Reflect before we point fingers

What phone calls could we make, to reconcile with others? Before it's too late? Rather than see them next over--or in--a coffin, before it's to late?

Don't we all bring some pocket sized-ones demons to our festive gatherings? Submissive ones? Do we dodge that argument (green/left vs. deplorables, anyone?) by activating our mouths with more pavlova or alcohol?

Do we skirt around loved ones who refuse eye-contact, unable to a risk a debacle by ramming through decades’ long impasse? Another drink, anyone? Do we wound with criticism (veiled of course), judgments, directives? 

Grant us Thy peace.  

One discordant note is enough to jar interpersonal harmony. 
Be the one to resolve discord with a healing cadence. 

May your Christ-mas time be blessed with God’s love, joy and understanding. 

And may you pass His peace to all you meet.

RUTH BONETTI wrote about her wintry Christmas experiences in Sweden and Finland in Burn My Letters, winner of the 2017 CALEB Nonfiction award. She sends love and prayers to all who battle fire in this tough summer season.

Follow her blog and FaceBook pages: http://ruthbonetti.musicabonetti.com
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Rest in Peace by Ruth Bonetti

What a month! Many poignant emotions touched our hearts as Easter terrorism shattered once safe havens of worship, followed by ANZAC remembrances.

What a long first term! After 10 weeks, we craved rest! What better than a seven-night cruise from our nearby port?

My husband is wary of waves and crowds. But stabilisers and ginger tablets curbed queasiness. Moi? I have Scandi blood and welcome waves. We so enjoyed our first cruise that we booked a 4-nighter to the Whitsunday Islands in July. (Hey like-minded friends, do join us.)

CELEBRATING 45 YEARS' MARRIAGE
As many grieve lost relationships, no one can be complacent. Like other couples, we weathered occasional turbulence. We're grateful for being sustained through those valleys. And give credit where it's due.

THANK YOU, GRANDAD

A few weeks before our wedding, my grandfather wrote us memories of his 1908 marriage to Christina. His letter described how he surprised his bride with the gift of a piano—her family were musical—and he’d phoned to engage a teacher. They knelt at the bedside and asked God to protect and guide and bless them through their lives.

"And we certainly asked for some material blessings that in the eyes of the Lord were very small and he blessed us with very much more than ever we contemplated or asked for. If you take God into your partnership I am sure it will be even better than what you anticipate."

Grandad presided amongst his prolific family, said grace before our smorgasbord. He died two weeks after our wedding. Out of range on our honeymoon, we missed the funeral.

[Excerpt from Burn My Letters]


Term 2 is busy playing performances of the musical, Strictly Ballroom and Mendelssohn's Oratorio Elijah with Brisbane Symphony Orchestra at St John's Cathedral and Caloundra. When do I find time to write, you ask. So do I. Can I submit a short story end of April? Write 9000 words on NaNoWriMo? Just two days. If not, some gentle goals are preferable to none. And in rehearsals I note how composers paint emotions, scenes and characters in music, as writers do with words. How dialogue carries action forward. 

Elijah's prayers for rain were answered; the drought broke. Pagan false prophets of Baal were executed. Then he crashed from his Mount Carmel pinnacle into burn-out, anti-climax and depression. When vengeful Queen Jezebel threatened to kill him, Elijah fled to the desert, huddled under a tree and wished to die. He needed rest. Angels provided food and drink. Then came the gentle whisper of the Lord's direction.

Enjoy the Aria "O rest in the Lord" as sung by Kathleen Ferrier.

Feeling rushed, frazzled, overwhelmed? Tick.
This resonates with me:

"...We become slaves to our to-do lists and become doers instead of be-ers. We give ourselves little or no time to feel, to more fully experience much of our lives.We forget that the essence to feel is the very essence of our vitality...When we're operating on the proverbial fast track, our brains will only do what which they have already done before...There is no room for the new...Slow is how we discover what it is to feel and be vital and alive, to fully participate in the dance of life." 

                             [Anat Baniel, Move into Life, pp. 135-6.]

                                                         Slow down. Rest. Refresh.

RUTH BONETTI will share self-publishing panel tips at Toowoomba Omega Writers Retreat June 7–9. This year she has been invited to judge the Lutheran Education Young Stories of Life.

Burn My Letters won the CALEB Nonfiction prize in 2017. Midnight Sun to Southern Cross is Ruth Bonetti’s second book in her historical biography/memoir saga of local stories. In the tradition of great family migration stories, it continues the saga of the Back brothers’ flight from Russian-occupied Finland to Australia as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth.
Available: Amazon, Bookdepository etc. Autographed copies from  ruthbonetti.com and http://www.ruthbonetti.com/burn-my-letters/ Ruth’s blog is http://ruthbonetti.musicabonetti.com

Earlier books are in her primary field of performance–of words and music–and education. Ruth founded Omega Writers in 1992.

Ditching the Black Dog

Photo copyright Susan J Bruce - all rights reserved

Do you ever find that the difficult patches in the writing life come at unexpected times?

The last part of October and the first part of November was an encouraging time for me. I won the unpublished manuscript section of the Caleb Prize and I flew to the Gold Coast on the following Monday to do a Margie Lawson writing Immersion. For those who don’t know, Margie is an international writing coach, and I was delighted when a place became available in one of her teaching weeks. And yes – it was AWESOME. 

Life was busy when I returned and I lost some of the rhythm that I had built up prior to doing the Immersion. Then I received some negative feedback, had a flare of some health issues and then for some reason I stopped writing. Discouragement struck – and I became stuck. The launch of If They Could Talk: Bible stories told by the animals, an anthology for which I was editor, helped lift my spirits. But even this milestone couldn't fix my writing doldrums.  

Maybe I’m the only one who goes through periods like this. Maybe the rest of you intrepid writers have it together and never feel like a four-wheel-drive bogged to the windows in Gobi desert sand. 

No? 

I also have to admit to a tincture of perfectionism somewhere in the mix. Perfectionism would be okay if we were perfect, wouldn’t it? Imagine a first draft that you never needed to revise. Ah, bliss! Cue serene music…

But back to reality.

Discouragement, seeded with grains of perfectionism, can lead to procrastination which leads to more discouragement and more procrastination, etc., etc., etc., which leads to hopelessness and before you know it, the black dog is something other than my cheeky Chihuahua/ Shihtzu cross pictured above.

I wrote nothing, playing a LOT of Sudoku instead. The only good thing that came from it was that I finally beat my husband’s best time on the online version of the game. We’re not at all competitive in our house by the way (cough). Other than that one moment of domestic triumph, I was sad to the core and didn’t know how to break myself out of the funk. 

Then I remembered a section of a book I’d recently read. A friend had mentioned Stephen Furtick’s book, Greater, a while ago and I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. In Greater, Furtick uses examples from the life of the prophet Elisha to encourage Christians to live out God’s vision for their life.

In chapter five, the author refers to the Bible passage, 2 Kings 3. King Joram of Israel enlists the help of King Jehoshaphat of Judah to fight the Moabite army. The problem is that after seven days of marching in the desert of Edom, they don’t have any water left for their animals or their troops. 

Jehoshaphat, being a godly king, asks Elisha to talk to God about their problem. Elisha agrees and God says something strange. He tells them that they won’t see wind or rain but He will make water flow from the hills in Edom. It is easy for God to do this. In several translations (e.g., the NASV) God tells them to make the valley full of trenches – i.e., dig a vast amount of ditches (2 Kings 3:16). 

Imagine being those people. There were no clouds in the sky, just heat and dust and a sense of hopelessness. Two vast armies on the verge of dying of thirst, and God tells them to start digging. It would seem counterintuitive in the extreme. Sweat and toil all night when there’s no visible way of having your need for water met. Yet they did it, and in the morning the valley was filled with water.

Furtick uses this as a prime example of how faith works. He writes: 

It’s as if God says, “If you really believe I’m going to do what I told you I would do, get busy. Show me your faith, and then I’ll show you My faithfulness. Do your part. If you do what I asked you to do, I will be faithful to My word. 

(Greater, p. 66)

I agree with Furtick, but I also think it's one of the best metaphors I’ve ever read on the nature of the writer’s life. 
We need to believe in what we are doing and act on that belief. Most of us reading this have felt the call to write. We know God wants us to do this. So we need to do it, even if the ideas have dried up and the words we thirst for elude us. When discouragement invades and we feel like giving up, we need to seek God. And when we do, we need to act. Even if it's writing just a few words at a time. 

In this instance of depression God told me to ‘remember’. Remember that I have called you. Remember what I’ve promised you. Remember that I love you. Now go and do your thing. Write in faith: one word after another and I will fill your words with my life. Dig the ditches and I will send my rain.

And so I write – and the black dog morphs back into a naughty puppy again – and I have hope. 

How about you. Do you have times in your life where writing is hard? What helps? Does 'digging ditches' work for you? Let's encourage each other in the comments below.

Reference: S. Furtick, Greater: Dream bigger. Start smaller. Ignite God’s vision for your life., Multnomah Books, Colorado, 2017.

Susan J. Bruce, aka Sue Jeffrey, spent her childhood reading, drawing, and collecting stray animals. Now she’s grown up she does the same kinds of things. Sue works part time as a veterinarian, writes stories filled with themes of overcoming, adventure and belonging, and loves to paint animals. Sue won the Short section of the inaugural Stories of Life writing competition and recently won the 'Unpublished Manuscript' section of the 2018 Caleb prize. Sue is the editor of 'If They Could Talk: Bible Stories Told By the Animals' (Morning Star Publishing) and her stories and poems have appeared in multiple anthologies. Her e-book 'Ruthless The Killer: A Short Story' is available on Amazon.com. You can check out Sue’s animal art on Facebook.

D-Day

For all those Sesame Street Fans, today’s blog has been brought to you today by the letter ‘D’.

In recent months, I have faced more than the usual amount of disappointments in both my personal and writing life. I recognise that this has affected my level of positivity, and if we were looking at it on one of those mathematics graphs, it has dipped below zero into negativity a few times. Add to this the amount of negativity that is the side-product of what we see on the news every day, and the social and political tension there is on so many different fronts, my soul has become disturbed and at times disgusted. This puts heavy pressure on any positivity index, and I find myself staring at the negative side of the ledger. I realise I am not the only one like this, who has personal and creative disappointments, and unless we unplug completely from the news media, we all have the potential to be disturbed by the things that are swirling in the world around us.

I was heading out bush to the family farm (my favourite place to escape), and my father asked if I would bring the word to their country church the next Sunday morning. I’d done this many times before. There are not many folks out there in that church, but I still believe they are as important as if I was sharing with the larger congregations in the city that number in the hundreds. I was feeling down, to be perfectly frank, but I said yes anyway. It was Dad’s turn to share, and he has been feeling a bit blue himself of late. 

When I hung up from the phone call, I said to God: ‘What on earth will I say. I have nothing. I am feeling really down at the moment.’

As is usual for me, God always starts speaking to me with a thought and here is where it started:

The Downward Spiral

It starts with disappointment or feeling disturbed or disgusted.

Then it leads to:

• Discouragement
• Downcast
• Depressed
• Despairing
• Disillusioned
• Doubt
• Deceived
• Destroyed

In my state of negative mind-set, I thought how ironic that there were so many words that started with a ‘D’ leading to that place of destruction – no hope. Then I thought, I bet there are hardly any words starting with ‘D’ that will lead us back the other way.

I bet wrong. 

I teased this all out into a long sermon with Scriptures, but these are the dot points

•   Decide – Do not keep heading further down. Stop and decide to face the other way, towards God and towards hope.
•   Delight – Delight in the Lord. Bless his name in worship. Give thanks for every good thing (Yes there are good things. You’re breathing, aren’t you? Do you have clothes and food and water? Start there.)
•  Declare – From a Scripture in Isaiah 45:19-24 “Declare what is right. Declare what is to be … present it.” There was much more to this point, but essentially, do you have Scriptures or promises from God? Speak them out loud in prayer.
•   Divine Direction – Keep your heart and ear inclined to God. Let him speak to you. Let him give you direction. Be obedient when he tells you to do something.
•   Divine Deliverance – Of course this involves the waiting part—waiting for God to reveal how he’s going to sort things out, because we all know, after our best shot, we’re still fumbling around in the dark. It is God who will bring the deliverance.
•   Destiny – We might have made plans, and sorted it all out nicely in our head, but when it all comes down to it, God is the one who orders our path. He is the light to our feet. He is the rock upon which we stand. He is the one who is our strength when we are weak. If we are going to have a destiny, let it be in God. 

Meredith Resce is author of seventeen published fiction titles, including the ‘Heart of Green Valley’ series.

She is currently working on two non-fiction titles “When Hell is on Your Doorstep” and “Saints Sinners and Zombies”

To learn more about Meredith and her writing work, visit her website: www.meredithresce.com

Or contact her through her Face Book Author page

Suffocating Creativity.

I never thought I'd ever say it. But I did. 
Two weeks ago. Right before putting on my happy face (or at least for those who saw it, it was supposed to be my happy face) and heading off to a conference to celebrate the very thing I'd just said I didn't want to do any more.
My confession is this: I actually said the following words:
"I don't want to be a writer any more."
Did I mean it? 
Well, yes. I did. And the feeling, as unusual as it was (and somewhat confusing too because 'being a writer' has been my 'heart-thing' for so, so long) lingered longer than to be just a writer's gloom comment. 
So what was going on?
On reflection I think I've identified three things contributing to my despondent confession: depression, fatigue and wordly overdose.

Depression:

I know how you feel.

Depression can almost be standard issue for writers. We tend to experience it in waves and cycles, I think it is part of our creative make up to see and feel the world deeply, and this has consequences. (Please note that if your depression is deep and ongoing then medical/psychological support can be extremely beneficial.) For me I know I need to monitor my mental health; I need to eat well, sleep well, take care of my introverted self which sometimes just needs to soak in silence and stillness without interruption. Prior to my "I don't want to be a writer" confession these factors had been out of balance, especially the introvert-self-care, so I was feeling low. I don't know about you, but when I'm feeling low I need creativity. And that would have been easy to fix if it wasn't for...

Fatigue:
I read somewhere, I can't find it now (don't you hate that?), that fatigue is one of the biggest killers of creativity. For me this is probably magnified. I'm a big sleep person. Always have been. I can't wake early and write (just visit me at 7:15 one morning and you'll see why that is) and I can't write at night because ideas keep me awake. So I have to write during the day - but I have three children. Add to this equation several writing deadlines that ate up every inch of rest time (and introvert recuperation time) and you'll understand why I was tired. 
Writing for me requires (celebrates?) creativity. Normally I'd rave to you about how much I love story, and ideas and thinking up new ways of expressing truth in fiction. But burn me out with fatigue and I just want to crawl up and hide. But hide I could not because I had...

Have you bitten off a bit much?

Wordly Overdose:
Emails, books, social media all crowded around me demanding I think up correctly worded responses and neatly summed up answers. Speak to me on a good day and I'll agree with you about the importance of an online presence, a faithful mailing list, marketing connections, promotional give-aways. But all of these require words, and if words are a writer's commodity - sometimes we can end up broke. Broke and badly in debt.

In the time since I've returned from the writer's conference I've had to work hard to restore a balance to my life and creativity; time on my own, paying back the debt of wordliness with silence, catching up on sleep etc. I'm aware that creativity is gradually creeping back in. But I can't take it for granted. 
Because, after all, I want to be a writer. 

What sucks the life out of your writing ambition? What are the warning signs for you, and how do you recharge/realign your creativity? 

Penny Reeve is a children's author currently living in Western Sydney. This week she hopes to read an Amanda Deed novel just because, watch the passion-fruits grow and enjoy her toddler's company.  You can   read more from Penny at her website, or facebook page.