Trinity Sunday

Today is the feast that we celebrate the Blessed Trinity.

At Mass, we'd sing "O! most holy Trinity! Undivided Unity! Holy God. Mighty God. God immortal, be adored."

The Trinity is a mystery peculiar to our Faith. What other religion celebrates the mystery of a Triune Deity? What other Faith honours God as three distinct Persons having one distinct Nature?

Many people cannot understand the concept. They can accept the idea of the Big Bang, that the whole world magically came to be through a giant explosion. (Persnally, I thought explosion destroyed, not created.) They can accept evolution. I have a hard time visualizing that somehow, an inanimate bit of sludge gradually became intelligent and over billions of years formed intelligent homo sapiens. Then again, if we took so many years to evolve into what we are now, why have we stopped evolving? As far as I know, Man has been pretty much static for at LEAST four thousand (probably more likesix thousand) years.

If you look in the world around you, so many things mirror groups of three. There are three stages of matter; solid, liquid, and gas. There is father, mother, and children in a family. There is past, present, and future. There are three leaves on a shamrock. There are three stages of life; child, adult, old age. So many things mirror the Triune God. It is amazing.

God bless you all, this holy day, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Poetry

Why do people write poetry? What is it about poetry that makes it so different than actually writing a story?

Poetry, for me, is like noteless music. There is no audible tune, no audible melody, harmony, descant. Yet, when you read, when you let your voice flow over the metered waves of words, there is a song that can be heard. There's the floating notes of a well-paced rhythm, the sturdy beating pulse of a hard-hit pattern, the pulsing ebb and flow of free verse.

Take this verse, for instance:

When blossoms flowered amid the snow, upon a winter's night,
Was born a Child, the Christmas Rose, the King of Love and Light.

This is the first line from "Gesu Bambino", a Christmas song. There is a joyous flow of rhythm, a lilting "tra-LA la-la, LA la-la, LA la-la LA" of beat. It makes your heart beat in tune and makes you smile without meaning to.

Take this line:

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship, and a start to steer her by.

This is from "Sea Fever", by John Masefield. You can hear the wild, needful beat of tempo here, the wistful thump of a yearning heart.

Poetry takes a heart's beat, whether it is joy or sorrow, loneliness, wistfulness, anger, and puts the beat of emotion to words. Poetry can speak to a heart better than many other written words, because it is raw emotion that is written.

Poetry sings, whether it means to or not. Poetry can be long or short, a full tale or a single moment, and in that lyrical phrase, in the singular moment, a revelation occurs.

Day Seven... I'm in HEAVEN!!

I can't believe it. I made it.

Day seven, and my last story is actually about our own little dog. His name is Sam, and he is a real soccer-fanatic dog. This story is called "Soccer Sam", and it's basically about how our little dog plays soccer with us.

I'm fully amazed with myself, though, because I did not think I'd be able to make it a full seven days doing just PB's. It's SO not me!

No pictures are drawn for this story...give me a break, I barely got off work! HOWEVER, I will have pictures pending.

Thanks for following me on this event. Give me five, y'all!

Spring Snow

I was optimistically expecting spring to be fully and completely here.

However, this morning I woke up to a fine dusting of snow. After an initial "GEEEZ!!" expression of disgust, I tried to put it all in perspective. After all, maybe the snow made people slow down as they drive, so that someone who might have driven too fast and killed themself was saved. Maybe the snow made someone (who I think I know...*wink wink*) very happy, and able to get through the day with a more positive attitude.

As I was walking to work I could hear all the little birds singing, "Why'd I think spring was here? What am I doing here?" and "Gotta keep warm! Gotta keep warm!" Here and there I'd see a bird sitting on a tree all blossomed out with snow flowers, with his wings puffed out aggressively and a disgruntled expression on his beak. I couldn't help thinking, "Poor bird!", but at the same time, there was something beautiful about the trees, about the way the rising sun illuminated the white-tipped edges of the pines, and the way the grass lay frosted in ice and sunlight.

If it must snow in spring, at least it does it beautifully.

Day Six... How are tricks?

Nearly at the end of the writing flow, and I came up with another poem story. This one is aimed at VERY very little children, and explores the different colours of eyes.

Blue as a sky at cloudless noon, green as the grass in spring's first growing, brown as the dirt in the garden bed, grey as the sea when the sun is gone.

Aren't those purty? Each of these lines starts a new line for the poem. I wish I was a crack illustrator, so I could do all my own illustrations. I wonder how one goes about becoming a licensed artist, as well as an author?

Day Five... I'm still alive

Day five of the writing frenzy, and I'm still gamely going at it.

For this story, I really had nothing. NOTHING! It was quite a day for me. I was so busy and stressed at work I came home from lunch and de-stressed (a little) with a book. On the way home from work five hours later, dredging up ideas and hammering my mindless grey cells against the stony emptiness of my skull, I walked by a meadow that was rushing water, and thought, "What does a stream think as it streams along?"

Voila. A poem popped into my head. It started with the line:

"The stream goes dreaming, streaming, gleaming,"

followed by the rest of these lyrics:

"Through a meadow merrily,
And it dimples dappled ripples
Lost in rushing reverie."

What does a stream dream? Hopefully, this poem will enliven, one day!

Tomorrow's day six. Onward, upward, ever forward! (No picture accompanied this poem. I can't do water, yet.

Day Four... Stress gaLORE!

It's amazing to realise we're already four days into NaPiBoWriWee. For this story, my mind actually decided to take me down the NF aisle...rather to my surprise, since I couldn't see a NF PB that would impress children.

However, my effort came through. I call it "Alligator Bugs", and it's about baby ladybugs, who start their lives looking something like little black alligators with orange spots.

See that bug, crawling up that leaf? It looks nasty! It must be a mean bug. Squish it. Wait! Wait! Don't squish that bug, 'cause it's a baby ladybug! Really.

Since baby ladybugs eat and eat and eat so many of the bugs that are bad for plants and trees, it's important not to kill them. They are a farmer's friend. Love the alligator bugs, 'cause one day they'll become a beautiful ladybug, and ladybugs are lucky!

The Name of This Book Is Secret: Pseudonymous Bosch

"Cassandra" is your normal, average, eleven-year-old school-girl...except she has pointy ears. She carries a backpack all the time, because her motto is "be prepared".

Also, Cassandra isn't her real name.

Cassandra and her colloborator Max-Ernest (a small, hyper, non-stop-talking boy whose name really isn't Max-Ernest) are thrown into a dangerous predicament when a real-estate agent drops off the box called "Symphony of Smells" to Cassandra's surrogate uncles. Cassandra is curious about the death of the magician, to whom the Symphony belonged, and when she and Max-Ernest go to investigate the house they come face-to-face with the eerie Ms. Mauvais and strange Dr. L, who are after a certain journal that contains a dark...Secret.

Cassandra and Max-Ernest manage to keep the journal away from Ms. Mauvais and Dr. L long enough to discover the message hidden "underneath" the journal's pages. They are clever and plucky enough to rescue a classmate, Benjamin Blake, a unique boy with "synethesia" (the gift to see things as a mixture of colours, smells, and sounds), from a dismal fate.

This book started out very, very deliciously, with an intriguing twist of writing-style and a delightfully confusing plot. I felt that the end kind of got a little too weird, but I want to read the second book in the series, to see if I really do like the books.

I recommend this book at least for a one-time read. It's got a good pace and intriguing style. It wasn't until the very end that I felt a little disappointed.

 My Rating:

* * * * *

Day Three... wheeeee!

So, today is May third. I'm three days into NaPiBoWriWee, and I've got my third story all drafted in my head. Now, I just need to write it down!

This story is turning out to be more of a entirely picture book with intermittent sentences. The pictures are going to tell the story more than the actual words.

Little Sophie wants to find her mommy the best gift of all, that will tell her "I love you" more than anything else will. However, the little frog she gives mommy, and the mudpie, just aren't the best gifts. It takes Sophie a little while, but she finally manages to find mommy the best gift of all.

This one was actually a breeze to do. I had it all in my head, and I just had to write it down. That NEVER happens to mel

This story I actually started with pictures, first. I inserted some of the dialogue on the paper as I wrote. I think that's why it flowed so easily.

Day Two... Whew!

I got story number two drafted for NaPiBoWriWee. It's amazing, how one's mind feels like it shrinks when there is so little time to write in.

However, this is the basis for story number two.

The young fairies are going to be learning Nighttime Trickery Lessons, and little Bramble Fire-fairy has a secret. She is afraid of the dark.

Bramble needs to figure out some way to create a lantern that she can take out into the darkness with her, without revealing her existence to humans. In the end, she manages to get her pet fairyfly to light up, creating the first fire-fly. The fire-fly becomes her new night-light.

I'll keep you posted. This story was a doozy for me!

Day One... FUN! :-)

Hurray! So I got my first story drafted, and an illustration idea done for it. I'm so e'cited.

Sarah spends her day being someone else. Every time she goes in for a meal, her mommy calls her one thing when Sarah's being someone else. At the end of the day Sarah decides to be just Sarah, so she can get her goodnight kiss.

This is probably the first short-short story I've ever written. I had to think small, but at the same time I had to connect with how a child would view the world.

Thanks to my little sister Jacinta Elizabeth, who was the inspiration for this story. Thank you, Poodle!