When I was in sixth grade, I had two friends who liked writing stories as much as I did. We harassed our teacher until she agreed that we could write 3-part stories using our spelling words instead of writing boring sentences. I've been writing ever since, but I have only recently become serious about being published.

Since I could never pick a single career, I have worked at many different things. I believe that each has contributed to my understanding of the world around me and helped me to grow. None would seem to be particularly focused on writing, but it is hard to do any kind of work that doesn't provide opportunities to use that skill.

Substitute teaching opened the door to opportunities to tutor high school students. I taught grammar, diction and composition using physics books, motorcycle magazines and sewing manuals. It was amazing to see the light go on in the eyes of students who thought that language skills had nothing to do with the things that really interested them.

When I worked as an employment counselor, I enjoyed helping people find work in a county with a 25% unemployment rate. Encouraging people to develop their language skills along with their job skills was an important part of that work.

For several years I helped to manage a sheltered workshop. While there, I collaborated with a photographer to write a book which the sales representatives used with potential customers. It was gratifying to see the increase in jobs for the workshop when business people realized what our employees could do.

I worked for many years as a consulting DBA for software installations and upgrades. Consulting is not so much about telling others how to do things as it is about learning quickly how to do new things. The days were long and demanding, but somehow I kept writing. In fact, it was during these years that I realized that while database administration was my paycheck, writing was my calling. Now that I am retired, I am happy to be able to explore my calling more intensely.

My husband will testify that I never go anywhere without paper and pen, because I never know when I will discover something worth writing about. The pastors at church think I take notes, but I am actually jumping off from their sermons to new horizons. I write for our church newsletter and for the church prayer group. I write for sailing magazines, too, because that is my life adventure. I have a couple of novels in process, along with a book of meditations and a book about using the labyrinth as a prayer tool.

I love writing for Helium, because it helps me hone my skills and it gives me even more ideas for my other work.

My passion is ...

Prayer Sailing Cooking

I know too much about ...

I wish I knew too much about something.

My parents always told me ...

There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

My childhood ambition ...

To be an astronomer

My favorite memory ...

the delicious feeling of swooshing across the water under sail for the first time.

Why I write ...

Because I can't stop

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Jewels of Light, a book about the stained glass in the Washington National Cathedral

My first job ...

telephone operator for a college dormitory

My best moment ...

The moment I realized how much God loved me.

Religion & Spirituality > Christianity (Other) Bible study: "Eat my flesh, drink my blood" - (John 6:53) explained

1 of 4

If this statement were all we knew about Jesus, then he would look like a demented cult leader. We might think that if we followed him, our future might be some mass madness like the Jonestown tragedy in which people voluntarily drank poison at the command of an insane religious autocrat. Fortunately, we have a lot more information about the context of this statement. Jesus was not trying to start a cult of cannibalism.

This statement occurred one day after Jesus had fed more than five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and some fish. It was a startling experience for those p...

More..