Tag Archives: storytellers

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Do you remember your first…

Everybody remembers their first, their first humorist. (Get your mind our of the gutter!) Today, my heart may swoon over David Sedaris, author of humorous delights like SantaLand Diaries in Holidays on Ice and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. But long before Sedaris, there was Dave Barry whose Homes and Other Black Holes had me rolling on the floor in laugher identifying with frustrations of my own home buying experience. Before Barry, (yes I am a humorist whore!) there was Erma Bombeck. Bombeck was a homemaker whose syndicated commentary on suburban life beginning in the mid-60s captured life as we knew it and humorously. If we can learn to see the humorous side of life as expertly as Bombeck did (as seen in her books like If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? and The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, ) life has got to be better.

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Want some humor help? Test the waters at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.

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Up from homelessness

Sleeping bag. ©iStockphoto/stuartrtaylor

Sleeping bag. ©iStockphoto/stuartrtaylor

As we saw from the homelessness stories in one sentence on cardboard signs, homelessness can happen to men and women. Sometimes it happens to those who have yet to hit adulthood. Lifetime aired one such two-hour story in 2003, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. 

Murray, whose parents are separately living the horror of AIDS from drug-addiction, is shocked into beginning to work her way out of her nightmare when her mother dies. She obtains admission to an alternative high school which she completes in two years instead of four. In a twist of favor, possibly the first of her life, Liz is awarded a scholarship to Harvard by the New York Times for an essay she writes about living homeless.

Murray graduated from Harvard in 2009. She wrote about her experience in Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard.

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What to do when you find yourself imprisoned?

Imprisonment draws to mind things like prison incarceration and slavery. It can also mean being held captive mentally, emotionally, or physically. Things that prevent free movement include agoraphobia, disabilities, injuries, sloth, addiction. When you find yourself held captive, what do you do? French mystic Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648-1717), imprisoned in the Bastille, the fortress Louis XIV used to imprison upper-class French society, wrote her biography.

The Bastille. ©iStockphoto/ilbusca

The Bastille. ©iStockphoto/ilbusca

I ran across The Autobiography of Madame Guyon in the 1990s. I bought it at a bookstore, but you can read it for free today. Guyon took me to 17th century France in the reign of Louis XIV where things were heating up in the religious realm. In 1785, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV in 1598, that gave the French protestants the right to practice their religion without fear of persecution. It was in this climate that Guyon, a devout Catholic, fell under sway of the practice of living in the presence of God through continual prayer. When her message caught the heart of Barnabite Francois Fenelon and religious circles of French court, her ideas were condemned and she was arrested.

Confined, Guyon wrote her religious autobiography, a practice popular among 17th century religious and noble women. Tristine Rainer says the practice originated with with Saint Augustine, “the fornicating, thieving, carousing, then converted sinner/saint” who wrote Confessions about 399 AD. However, Guyon’s autobiography steers more toward an explanation of her theology and suffering than the racy confessional bestsellers of her era that led to the novel.

Though lost, Guyon’s autobiography was discovered and published in French in 1992. Is there an imprisonment confession/justification, religious or otherwise, in your future?

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Telling the disaster story

Spring in Arkansas brings new leaves on trees, fresh colorful blooms, and potentially nightmarish weather. April 13, I watched as heavy rains caused flooding in Little Rock near my home.

A catastrophic damage causing F3 tornado on April 2nd, 2006 near Wynne, Arkansas. © iStockphoto/clintspencer

A catastrophic damage causing F3 tornado on April 2nd, 2006 near Wynne, Arkansas. © iStockphoto/clintspencer

Pictures posted on Facebook included a car in water almost over the top of its hood and a collapsed retaining wall on Kavanaugh, a winding through street. Bad weather struck central Arkansas again Sunday, April 30, 2014, when an EF4 tornado swept across several counties. Homes and businesses were damaged or completely blown away to the foundation. The new $13 million Vilonia Intermediate School was totally destroyed. But the most heart-rending loss was the fifteen lives taken by the tornado.

How does one go on after family members, homes, and businesses are wiped out unexpectedly in a moment? Certainly the disaster workers, friends, and families as well as many other countless hearts that give of their resources to assist are a help. It might also help to tell your storm related story. The Hodgepodge Darling, a blogger named Jessica Sowards who identifies her blog as “one crunchy, Christian girl’s musings on homemade life, motherhood and the daily attempt to walk humbly with her God,” did just that on April 30, 2014. The post goes on to share her friend April’s faith amidst the grief of loss and her own personal physical injuries.

Though the weather predictions were bad, Sowards and her family moved to their new home with its concrete basement in Vilonia the day of the storm. “We’ll be safe, we thought. We were.” Sowards tells of watching the tornado as it moved over the area where her friend April Smith lives. Sowards’ husband went to check on the Smith family, then relayed the horrifying news of the death of the family’s two sons.

As a blogger, you never know when something will ring a bell with the masses and be shared across the blogosphere get picked up or even become viral. The post by The Hodgepodge Darling was published by Faith-it.com, local news stations, and even the Deseret News. As it came to me I was struck by the faith of April Smith, injured in a hospital bed, grieving the loss of her two sons and the family home. I was struck by the love of a friend who was at her side immediately after the tornado hit. I was struck that Soward was so trusted by her friend that Smith told her to publish her hospital bed picture and tell her story letting the whole world glimpse her at her lowest point.

Many of us enjoy folks coming alongside to celebrate our successes, milestones, good times. It takes real transparency to allow others in when we are battered, broken, bruised. The openness to share our deepest depths can be opportunity to show that life isn’t always a walk on the sunny side. Sometimes life’s path is trough dark times we could never imagine or foresee. The courage to tell of those difficult days can encourage others to face their own as well as come alongside. And for those lucky enough to have a friend like Jessica Soward to help you tell your story when you are unable to yourself I say, “Honey, you’ve hit gold.”