“Write for your audience” is the golden rule for professional communicators. In education, for example, our division crafted speeches, news releases, fact sheets, memos and reports to the state Legislature, employees, board members, students and parents, each from a different…
Learning from Alma Woodsey Thomas how to find beauty within, around and through life
Are you searching for new skills needed to navigate life these days? The familiar paths were linear and logical, and too often, they go nowhere. Many feel they’re walking a labyrinth in the shadows. Imagine that circular shape and come…
Music and change, blowin’ in the wind
Although travel is still restricted and we look at the outside world from our windows, my husband and I recently ventured out to the Northern California coast. Settling into our quiet upstairs room, with a balcony overlooking the magnificent Pacific…
A story that’s better than happily ever after
Don’t get me wrong. I’m keen on Nordic and UK mysteries. But last week, my friend and I sought relief from plotlines that feature a cranky, substance-abusing detective who alienates family and colleagues yet ensnares the killer. These sagas sometimes…
On Earth Day, let us remember the earth is filled with God’s glory
“Let me seek, then, the gift of silence … where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is in all.” — Thomas Merton, “Thoughts In Solitude.” This…
Artist brings Enneagram to life through series of 30 paintings
Much has been written about the popularity of the Enneagram, an ancient personality typing system. For Michelle B. Noah, a Dallas-based artist, the Enneagram has been more than a tool for self-understanding: It has served as a muse for her…
Study asks how art influences faith
Two Baylor University scholars and a third at Fuller Theological Seminary are setting out to determine the relationship between two difficult, if not impossible, things to measure: art and faith. The researchers want to determine how encountering art creates discernable…
Kentucky landscape artist draws calm from the storm of her childhood as a missionary kid
Shawn Marshall paints serene landscapes that bring calm to corporate offices, galleries and homes. These meditative images, however, are a way for her to continue processing the chaos of childhood years spent in a war zone as a child of…
Alliance offers online watercolor series with reflections on racial injustice
Kathy Manis Findley made a career pursuing justice as a Baptist minister, and she is up to it again with a virtual watercolor exhibit offered as both a clarion call and lament for racial inequity in a time of pestilence….