Blogging A Trail of Bread Crumbs – 2014 Recap

Tags

2014 review, Blog, Blogging, favorite blog posts, freshly pressed, poetry, Recap, writing

Blog posts are like a trail of bread crumbs leading you back through a misty past. They tell you where you were, not where you’re going. I can’t say I’m unhappy to leave 2014 behind. And if a few of those bread crumbs get gobbled up by birds, so much the better.

Still, it’s instructive, looking back before you plow forward. Here are a few trends, challenges, and highlights from my last year of blogging.

Is Less More, or Just Less?

I wrote fewer posts on this blog in 2014 than in previous years. But I’ve always been a slow blogger. Even at the beginning in 2012 I was posting only twice a week. Eventually it turned into once a week, then every ten days of so. I’ve gone as long as two weeks between posts now. I seem to be racing toward some decline. But it worries me. I don’t want to stop blogging. I don’t want to lose you, the readers who have come to mean so much to me. I love blogging. I want less to be more. Is that possible?

Into the Pit and Out Again

One reason I’ve blogged less is because I’ve been challenged more–both personally and professionally. Early last year, I thought I lost my son to addiction for good. I’d given up hope. In desperation, I created a new, anonymous blog, just to vent all the rage and grief and craziness I was feeling. And it helped. It brought me back from the brink, and him as well. Now he has 8 months of recovery behind him and still going stronger than ever. Still, we take it one day at a time. There’s no other way.

Professionally, I was thrown down into the pit as well. I finished the last draft of my novel in December 2013.  2014 was supposed to be the year I sent this darling out to agents and publishers. I put it aside for a few weeks so I could re-read it fresh. That’s when it all came crashing down. I hated my novel!

I was devastated. After so many years of tender loving care, this baby too was lost to me. In a frantic, I reached out to a few writer friends and researched the web, searching for a life-line, hoping this was a normal reaction. Did all writers end up hating their novels? It turns out, most don’t, but some do. It’s not uncommon. I found a new beta reader and, working with her strong encouragement and deep insight, went through the draft one more time. (Thank you, Kerri!). Now I’m back on track again. I’ve finished what I hope will be my final draft, and set it aside for another read. I’m keeping my fingers crossed I won’t hate it this time.

I had one more personal crisis in 2014, but I’m saving that for another blog post. All this did slow me down and drain away some of the energy and inspiration for keeping this blog going. In retrospect, I’m surprised I wrote as much as I did. Maybe I’m more resilient than I thought.

Now for the 2014 highlights:

Most Viewed Posts: A Blast From the Past

According to my WordPress Annual Report, my most viewed posts in 2014 were written in 2013. Hmmm. What does that mean? Well, I could take it sunny-side up: My writing has staying power, or so WordPress euphemistically suggests.  Or it could mean my best blogging is behind me. Well, time will tell. Here’s my two most viewed posts:

• Blogging and “The Accident of Touching” (Freshly Pressed in 2013)
• Growing Up in a Haunted House (part of a series of blog posts I wrote in 2013 and re-blogged last Halloween)

Binge Blogging

Series are all the rage now, both in television viewing and reading. We love characters who linger, whose stories become our stories, who return to us day after day, week after week. Even season after season and book after book. We boast of our binges: mine was Downton Abbey last week. I re-watched all of Season 4 during the afternoon, then watched the premier of Season 5 that evening. I went to bed fully sated.

Binge blogging, sadly, is not quite the same. It’s done less for the pleasure of readers and more to accommodate long-winded writers. Like me. I take more pleasure in my series than my readers do. It’s a guilty indulgence.

The first one was a 4-part literary deconstruction, tying together the themes found in the writings of Milton, Wordsworth, and Lacan. (I know, ouch!) The first and last posts in the series are listed below.

• “Some Tragic Falling Off” into Difference and Desire
• “Thou Art That” – Part IV, “Some Tragic Falling Off”

The next 2-part series on Annie Dillard’s writing and my own was much more popular:

• Dialogue with Annie Dillard on “The Writing Life”
• More on “The Writing Life” with Annie Dillard

Hu-More, Not Less

Three personal favorite, which readers also seemed to enjoy, were attempts to lighten an otherwise overly heavy and oh-so-serious blog load. Not to mention, help me lift my head out of those pits I mentioned earlier, if for just a moment. It was quite refreshing. Maybe I need to hu-more in the future.

• Humor, It’s Serious Stuff
• Selling My Babies. Where’s the Joy?
• Dreaming of Death—Oops, Bears

Freshly Pressed (Again!)

I’ve been freshly pressed three times now. Each time is a surprise and delight. Gifts that come from out of the blue. The last time was in June 2014. This one’s about marriage: drifting apart, pulling together, and finding that magic balance.

• On Herds, Husbands & Riffing on Writing

My First Guest Post!

I was also honored, and delighted, to be invited to write a guest post on poetry for the lovely Luanne’s blog, Writer Site. I posted it on my site as well.

• A Cranky Reader: What I Crave When I Read Poetry

Your Favorites and Mine

Surprisingly, and happily, some of my readers’ favorite posts were mine as well, and several featured my poetry. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is. I haven’t written much poetry in my life, but all of it is deeply personal. I think sometimes that to truly know me, who I am at heart, you would have to read my poetry. And you have. Without blogging–without my poetry being read–large, intimate parts of me would remain relatively unknown.

Three of your favorite posts featuring my poetry:

• “Taste and see – I am spare”
• The Slant of Afternoon, Playing with Light
• Song from a Dream – “My Queen’s Soul Lies Naked”

Two of my favorite posts featuring poetry from my favorite poet, Wallace Stevens:

• Cultivating “a mind of winter”
• Downward into Darkness on Extended Wings

Two of your non-poetry favorites this year was a photo-essay on fallen oak trees, and a list and lament about all the books I’ve abandoned this past year.

• My Roman Oaks
• Books I’ve Abandoned

Hugs and Kisses

Thank you for bearing with me through this long post, and through this last challenging year of infrequent posts–those bread crumbs scattered along a dark trail with its few gleams of light, and rare laughter.

Your comments and encouragements have meant the world to me, and made all the difference. May you all have a truly marvelous 2015.

Advertisements

“I See You But Do You See Me?” – Artist Marc Clamage, Bearing Witness

Tags

art, bearing witness, beggers, Bernie Glassman, Blog, Homeless, I Paint What I See, living on the street, Marc Clamage, painting, panhandlers

“I see you but do you see me?” Maxine by Marc Clamage

Since my last post, I discovered another artist who refuses to turn away. He bears witness one face at a time by painting panhandlers he sees in Boston Harvard Square near his workplace.

“I used to hurry by them,” writes artist Marc Clamage, “but then I began to stop. Each face tells a story, I realized, and I would try to capture as many as I could through a series of oil paintings.”

Rosie and David with pet guinea pig, by Marc Clamage

He’d noticed there were more than usual that year, and that they seemed “younger, and more troubled.” Sometimes even whole families begging on the streets.

Many of the people he encountered were simply passing through, on their way to a new job or to visit family. Some panhandled to supplement a low-wage job, or help pay the rent.

Others were homeless. Panhandling was their only source of income. A few of these were mentally disturbed, or drug addicts. Some were sick and dying.

 Marc writes: “I do not ask the panhandlers to ‘pose’ for me, but to carry on with their business. I pay each person $10, though I wish I could afford more, because they earn that small fee in the hour or two it takes me to paint them.

“Newly Engaged, Need Motel to Celebrate” Justin and Lauren (The Lovebirds) by Marc Clamage

Over that time, we often get to talking, which has been a privilege and an education.

I’ve seen or heard many human dramas: the tragic love story of Gary and Whitney; squabbles over the best places to work; the mysterious figure everyone calls “The Rabbi,” stuffing $20 bills into cups and disappearing before anyone can see his face.

“I’ve witnessed a few instances of cruelty, but many more of thoughtfulness and generosity. And when I head home, I’m always struck by one thought: There but for the grace of God go the rest of us. Perhaps that’s why we find panhandlers so hard to look at.”

I was deeply touched by Marc’s paintings and by the stories of the people who posed for him. You can view more of his paintings and read the stories on his website “I Paint What I See“, or at his blog.

Gary, Desert Storm Vet, by Marc Clamage

I also like what he says about how he paints:

“I paint what I see, only what I see, only with it right in front of me, only while I’m looking right at it. I do not work from photographs, or imagination, or memory, or even from sketches. I paint exclusively from life. The essence of representation is that every choice, every brushstroke must be made in direct response to the experience of visual reality.”

To really “see” someone, the way an artist does, objectively, without judgement, and yet responding to what is seen, the pain, or loneliness, or confusion, or anger; to see and be seen like that, must be freeing, for both the painter, the one painted. And for the viewer as well.

To simply behold what we see–the good and bad and beautiful and ugly–without judgement, but with compassion and humility, is the essence of “bearing witness.” And it must have a healing effect.

Bernie Glassman in “Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace” wrote:

“In my view, we can’t heal ourselves or other people unless we bear witness. In the Zen Peacemaker Order we stress bearing witness to the wholeness of life, to every aspect of the situation that arises. So bearing witness to someone’s kidnapping, assaulting, and killing a child means being every element of the situation: being the young girl, with her fear, terror, hunger, and pain; being the girl’s mother, with her endless nights of grief and guilt; being the mother of the man who killed, torn between love for her son and the horror of his actions; being the families of both the killed and the killer, each with its respective pain, rage, horror, and shame; being the dark, silent cell where the girl was imprisoned; being the police officers who finally, under enormous pressure, caught the man; and being the jail cell holding the convicted man. It means being each and every element of this situation.”

Whitney, cancer victim, by Marc Clamage

To bear witness in that way must be the hardest, the most healing, and the most humbling thing we could ever do. And the most needed.

Elsewhere, Glassman writes: “When we bear witness, when we become the situation — homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death — the right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do. We don’t have to figure out solutions ahead of time. . . . Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.”

More of Marc’s paintings follow. See if you see what inspired him to paint these people. Sometimes we see something that cannot be “passed over” lightly, but must be “passed on” to others in whatever way we have of preserving them:  in paint or print, or images on a blog site. So I pass these on to you.

Colleen, by Marc Clamage. Died of exposure and a drug overdose.

Gideon, by Marc Clamage

“Too ugly to prostitute, too kind to pimp.” Anthony by Marc Clamage

Maria by Marc Clamage

Laurel by Marc Clamage. Her sign says she’s a mother of 4 and victim of domestic violence. On the flip side it says “I’m not a whore, asshole.”

Carrie by Marc Clamage. Now clean and sober and off the streets.

[This post originally appeared on another blog in a slightly different form]

“Wake Up Amazed” by Kaze Gadway

Tags

Blog, Blogging, compassion, Homeless, Homelessness, Judith of Norwich, Kaze Gadway, kazegadway, kazestories, Love

Sometimes I come across a blog post that I just have to share. The excerpt below is from Kazegadway – Finding the Wonder Daily.

As I cruised the streets where homeless sleep, I encounter a single young woman wrapped up in a blanket trying to keep warm. I stopped to give her a warm sleeping bag. She spoke very clearly. “I was so cold last night that I didn’t think I would wake up. Then I wake up and someone is offering me a sleeping bag. That is so amazing.”

I grin and leave as she wraps up and goes back to sleep. I worry that she is going to be harmed by sleeping in the open with no friends nearby. Then a homeless man in a jacket and backpack calls out to me. “I’m watching to see no one steals her blanket. Thanks for stopping by.”

I am blessed twice over. Once by a young woman who awakes amazed at the world. And again by a homeless man who watches over her.

The author is in her “7th decade.” A woman who, after spending a lifetime working to address the root causes of poverty around the world, now spends her days tending the homeless, and writing about her encounters. The excerpt above is from a post called “Wake Up Amazed” and you can read the rest of that post at that link.

But every post is a gem, filled with compassion, wisdom, and humility. She writes in “Attention“:

I find myself paying attention to where the homeless sleep or just hang out during the day. I notice who has a blanket or a backpack and if they are alone or with someone. I look at their faces and see alertness or maybe pain. Since I have moved to Albuquerque, they are never just in the background.

Perhaps that is why they talk to me. Something they see in me tells them that I notice them as people.

Here’s another brief snippet from Prayer and Action

One middle aged man talks frankly about looking for a job. “I’m not going to get a job. Every day it seems less possible. The longer I stay away from work, the more I look like a thug, unshaven and dirty.”

I give him all the contacts that I have. I don’t want to end the conversation by saying “good luck” or something else lame. So I hesitate.

“You aren’t going to pray for me, are you?” he says with a laugh.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “But I don’t know how to acknowledge you are a part of eternity without praying. I want you to know that you are special.”

I stop, feeling very stupid.

Stunned, he says “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” He walks away.

Silently with wet eyes I pray “God have mercy.

Her stories touch me deeply. “There but for the grace of God, go I” we sometimes say when encountering people less fortunate than us. There goes my son, your daughter, our Nana, that guy I went to Prom with, the girl who broke my heart in college. The professor who seemed half-crazy in the kindest, wisest way. The next-door neighbor who took in stray cats and fed me cookies when I was a kid. They are part of us.

Reading her simple posts brings to mind what the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich wrote so long ago:

God is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.

Between God and the human there is no between.

I hope you will take a look at her blog.  You may “wake up amazed” by how profound simple kindness can be. Kazegadway – Finding the Wonder Daily.

Blogging and “The Accident of Touching”

Tags

Blog, Blogging, Jacque Lacan, online community, Online Writing, poetry, Shikibu Murasaki, touching and being touched, writing

“The accident of touching / is so rare! Sometimes / I pause my hand on purpose / and hope to find yours there.”

These are the last lines of a poem I wrote long ago.

But I realize now that’s what this blog is all about, a way of “pausing my hand on purpose,” and hoping to find you there.

It’s all about touching, isn’t it? Touching others with our lives, our insights and understanding, our memories and dreams, our poetry and art. Blogging meets this basic human need—to touch others and be touched in return.

We’ve all heard how physical touching is essential to human health and happiness. They say people can shrivel up and die for want of being touched or having someone to touch. A simple pat on the shoulder, a hug, a hand squeeze can make all the difference. Merely having a pet, they say, saves lives.

But there’s a basic human need for another kind of touching—from the inside out. Touching others with what means the most to us, our deepest responses to the world around us. Keeping those unspoken, unexpressed, can be as withering as being untouched physically. Which is why, perhaps, so many writers and artists will give their work away for free if need be, just to allow what’s inside out into the world where it can touch others, and “evoke responses.”

“The function of language is not to inform but to evoke . . . responses.”  – Jacques Lacan

It’s why, perhaps, art for art’s sake is a need for some. Art not to please others, but to evoke a response. To share something essential with others that must not go unspoken, unheard.

“Again and again something in one’s own life, or in the life around one, will seem so important that one cannot bear to let it pass into oblivion.

There must never come a time, the writer feels, when people do not know about this.”

Shikibu Murasaki, Tale of Genji (978 – 1014 AD)

Blogging is like those conversations we have in the wee hours of the morning, when the party is over and all have left except for those few lingering souls who find themselves opening up to each other in ways they could never do when meeting on the street or over dinner. Those 3 AM conversations, you know.

That’s how blogging often is done too, late at night when we can’t sleep, or after we’ve put our novel to bed, or when we wake early and are seeking the company of other early risers, or those living half-way round the world from us.

In person, we rarely have time to bare our souls this way in such depth without interruption. But here we can do it without disturbing anyone’s sleep or taking them away from their work or families.

We can share our thoughts and evoke responses in our own time, and others can respond in the same way, with a quick “like” or a longer comment. And we can respond in return.

For loners or social introverts like myself, it’s a way of reaching out to others that feels more comfortable than the spoken word. I feel I may be getting “the best” of them in those wee hour revelations, as they are getting the best I have to offer, a side of myself I seldom share apart from the written page.

It’s the reciprocity that I find so meaningful. Touching and being touched in return.

Here’s the rest of that poem I wrote so long ago, unshared, until today.

The Accident of Touching

Once, in some wild gesture,
Some random fancy
I found my hand stretched out,
Open and unprotected.
There, your hand paused,
Palm moist and heavy
Yet warm and lively.
Before I thought to clasp it
The moment passed and
You were gone.

Now, I watch hands
As they quickly dart and
Never cease to move.
The accident of touching
Is so rare! Sometimes
I pause my hand on purpose
And hope to find yours there.

by Deborah J. Brasket

More of my posts on blogging:

Blogging as Virtual Love-Making, and the Science Behind It

Is Blogging Orgasmic?  More on the Science of Sharing

More poetry, unshared, until I blogged:

The Geometry and Geography of Love

A Scattering of Rocks – Zen in the Garden of Eden

Hot Hills in Summer Heat

Walking Among Flowers

Living on the Edge of the Wild

Tags

Blog, Blogging, Deborah Brasket, followers, inspiration, Living on the edge of the wild, online community, passion, supporters, writing

To commemorate my one-year blogging anniversary, I’m re-blogging my first post, with one like and one comment. How I love that I’ve discovered these past 12 months a community of fellow bloggers, sharing our stories, our passion, our art, our inspiration, and sometimes our heartache and troubles–and being blessed with support and encouragement, and sometimes, just someone to say I hear you, I like what you are doing here. Many thanks to all my followers and friends. Your are an important part of my life because your support allows me to pursue an activity I’ve come to love–blogging my thoughts into the universe, and being assured someone out there is listening.

Deborah J. Brasket

I created this blog to explore what it means to be living on the edge of the wild.

We all are, in some way, living on the edge of the wild, either literally or figuratively, whether we know it or not.  We all are standing at the edge of some great unknown, exploring what it means to be human in a more-than-human universe.

We encounter the “wild” not only in the natural world, but in ourselves and our daily lives, if only in our own strange dreams, our own unruly minds and rebellious bodies, our own inscrutable families and weird and wonderful pets.

We encounter the “wild” at the edges of science, the arts, and human consciousness.

I began my exploration into the wild quite literally, when our family was living aboard La Gitana and traveling around the world for six years. It became starkly apparent when I was sailing across the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by nothing but the sky…

View original post 300 more words

Sweet Satisfaction

Tags

Best Moments Award, Blog, Blog of the Year Award, Inspiring Blog Award, Moments Matter, Nomination, Recognition

There’s a sweet satisfaction in being recognized by your peers for something you love to do.

I’ve been honored recently with nominations for two awards, The Inspiring Blog Award and The Best Moments Award.  Then at the end of 2012 I was nominated by two readers for the Blog of the Year Award.

I’m always a bit shy about accepting these awards, and sometimes delay the moment to show my deep appreciation for those who nominated me—but not too long, I hope.

Each award usually comes with its own requirements which I will try to fulfill, though perhaps in abbreviated form.

Many of my favorite blogs I’ve already nominated for other awards, so I do not include them here.  The ones below are some of the most exciting and interesting blogs I’ve discovered lately.

The Inspiring Blog Award

What a pleasure it is to accept this award from Katie Checkley.  Her blog The Intrinsic Writer on the art of writing is such an inspiration to me. I always look forward to her “Old School Sunday” posts where she revisits some time-honored books and authors, like King Lear and the poetry of William Carlos Williams, reminding us why they stood the test of time, and how they still speak to us today.

Here’s the rules for this award:

1. Display award image on your blog page
2. Link back to the person who nominated you
3. State what inspires you
4. Nominate 5 others for this award
5. Notify said bloggers

What inspires me? 

The natural world inspires me, especially the ocean and the creatures that inhabit it, the rolling hills of California with its groves of gnarled oak trees, the deep stillness of the redwood forests, and the way the night sky wraps around all of it and points toward worlds beyond our grasp.

Exploring the way science and spirituality overlap and interconnect inspires me.  The creativity of the human mind with all its art and music and literature inspires me.  Writing inspires me, brings me home to myself and lifts me out of myself at the same time.

Small, fragile, fleeting things inspire me—mist and fog, dewdrops on spider webs, budding roses and those whose petals are ready to fall, the sound of wind blowing through the birches, sunlight slanting through trees, a baby’s sigh and the feel of its petal soft sole, the smell of lavender and rosemary, my children’s smiles,  my husband’s strong hands and gentle eyes, the cry of eagles circling overhead, the sound of bees among the flowerbeds, a glimpse deer in the meadow, and the spout of a whale at sea.

So many things inspire me, it would be easier to say what doesn’t:  greed, injustice, cruelty, hate, indifference, neglect, prejudice and intolerance, the exploitation of people or the environment. People who work to create a better, safer, saner, more compassionate and just world inspire me.

What inspires me most is this thing some call Tao, Buddha, Zen, God, Christ, a Higher Power, Divine Mind, Infinite Love, the Un-nameable, the Ungraspable, the Not-I,  the All-in-all.  That which pervades and embraces and defines everything in the universe and all that lies beyond.

My Nominees for Inspiring Blog Award

Silver Poetry – All that glitters is not gold – Poetry and Artwork

Identity. Smeared Words. Mouthed Art – Photography and poetry

Women, Words and Wisdom – Celebrates and features the writing of extraordinary women

Word by Word – Books, journeys, and places that inspire

Africa Far and Wide – A visual journey into the life of Africa

Brenda Moquez – Passionate Pursuits – Stories about life and writing

The Dad Poet – On fatherhood, poetry, nature and joy

Women Making Strides – Empowering women to be leaders

The Best Moments Award

Awarding the people who live in the moment,
The noble who write and capture the best in life,
The bold who reminded us what really mattered –
Savoring the experience of quality time.

This award comes from the Moments Matter website, that features the new, interesting articles blog posts about the in life. The RULES for this award can be found here. It includes an acceptance speech, so here goes:

Acceptance Speech

I accept this award on behalf of all the things which inspire me to live in the moment (see list above), and all the bloggers who remind me each day to live more deeply and appreciate the finer things of life.  I also accept it on behalf of the nominees for this award, listed below, whose art and images and words have become some of the best moments of my day, each day I receive them.

My nominees for the Best Moments Award:

Garyschollmeier – A life in photos

Debbie Yare – Fine artist and photographer specialising in contemporary landscapes

Marice Sapiro – Fine artist capturing the ethereal, spiritual, magical tones, light and mood of nature

Ethereal Streaming – A flowing journey of the dreaming life

Another Lovely Day – Capturing moments that bring peace, joy, beauty, fun, thoughtfulness, and inspiration

Photo Avant-Garde – Features selected photographers

Serenity Spell – Exploring Florida’s threatened ecosystems through photography

Coast 72s Blog – Photos and reflections on life

Blogger of the Year 2012 Award

The lovely Sandy at Another Lovely Day and Susan at Women Making Strides both nominated me for this award.

Sandy’s blog gives us an intimate look at one amazing woman’s life, her hopes and fears, her songs and poems, her photography and meditations on life.  I always come away from her posts feeling like I was hugged, like I had shared time with someone real and special.

Susan’s blog empowers women to be leaders in our own lives, and encourages readers to support each other by sharing their views in the comments.  The powerful posts start off with inspiring quotations from celebrated women.

I will accept this award with pride and pleasure, but I will not nominate anyone for this award at this time, since 2012 is past and it’s too soon to pass out 2013 Blog of the Year awards.

Please take the time to visit some of the amazing blogs in this post.  You won’t be sorry you did.

A Family of Bloggers Award

Tags

Blog, Blogging, creaitvity, Family bloggers award, photography, writing

I’ve been honored with a nomination for the Family of Bloggers Award, thanks to the lovely Sandy, whose blog Another Lovely Day blesses my email inbox each morning with beautiful photography, inspiring quotations, and posts about the writing life.

This nomination gives me another opportunity to honor other bloggers with a nomination to thank them for being a part of my “family of bloggers” and for blessing cyber-space with their talented creativity, passion and wisdom.

Here are my nominations for this lovely award:

Jacqueline, Bliss in Images  http://blissinimages.wordpress.com

Sumptuous images and stunning writing.  The photos in this post are from Bliss in Images

Cassie, Books and Bowel Movements  http://booksandbowelmovements.com

Book reviews that are poetic and profound.

Seedbud, Leaf and twig 

Poetry and photography entwined—simple and stunning

David, Signals to Attend 

Beautiful meditations on the art of living.

Katherine, The Intrinsic Writer

Savvy tips on writing and the writing life

Matt, Monkey Moon Machine 

Fun and offbeat musings on writing and creativity.

Patrick, Canadian Hiking Photography 

Nature photography worthy of framing, along with tips on how to take them.

Those who wish to accept this award can go HERE for the guidelines, one of which is to create an anagram from the word FAMILY listing the attributes we hope to bring to the blogging family.

Here’s what I hope to contribute:

Fellowship,

Artful living,

Mindful writing,

Inspiration, a

Love of life, and a

Yin-Yang perspective to pull it all together.

PHOTO CREDIT: Many thanks to Jacqueline, Bliss in Images blog, for the use of her photos in this post.