Books: Writing Home

September 30, 2014 | Authors,Books,Family

Title: Writing Home (Hearth Stone Books, Royal Oak, Michigan, 2005)
Author: Cindy La Ferle‘s essays and columns have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Reader’s Digest, Country Gardens, Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion, Writer’s Digest, The Oakland Press, The Royal Oak Daily Tribune and many other publications. She lives with her family in Royal Oak, Michigan.

What a wonderful collection of essays! Cindy La Ferle is a great observer of human nature, and she is a brilliant writer with a calm and assuring voice. Many of her essays brought me to tears, especially the ones she wrote about her son. My children are in between the stages of childhood and teenage-hood. I look into their faces that keep changing yet staying true to who they are — and I try to savor every moment with them. Her words remind me that this motherhood ride is an exciting one with the milestones speeding by in the blink of an eye.

“The sacred is in the ordinary. It is found in one’s daily life — in friends, family, and neighbors; in one’s own backyard.” Thanks, Cindy, for reminding me.

Lucy

January 11, 2012 | Family,Home

I love what comes home in backpacks.

The dog’s tail actually does curl up like that. I love that, too.

Books: Honey for a Child’s Heart

April 24, 2010 | Books

I just finished reading Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life by Gladys Hunt. I read it because Ilina at Dirt & Noise wrote about it.

It’s a tad heavy-handed with the whole “separating the wheat from the chaff” ideas regarding books (and, in my mind, people), but I should have expected that, I suppose, from a Christian writer published by Zondervan, a Christian publisher.

But I like her lists for reminders and ideas. And, ironically, her definition of home is one of the least judgmental things I’ve heard in the last couple of years, and it’s a subject I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, “What is home? My favorite definition is ‘a safe place,’ a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation. It’s a place where people share and understand each other. Its relationships are nurturing. The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable.”

I’d have to say amen to that.

Books: Home

February 28, 2010 | Books

I just finished reading Home by Marilynne Robinson. It was a closer look at some of the people in Gilead. A bit darker than Gilead (not as dark as Housekeeping, though) but just as insightful. Robinson is an amazing writer.