Tag: books
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Intentional Places: On Where We Spend Time
I’ve begun volunteering at a local library. Up the steep stairs of an old Greek Revival-style house, artist studios share space with this small, independent lending library focused on women’s history. It drew my attention the very first evening I climbed those stairs and looked around. I’d gone out exploring on one of our city’s…
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In Praise of Small Projects
I recently enjoyed a small project way more than I’d expected to. The kick of energy and enjoyment it brought has left me reflecting on the relative sizes of my efforts. I believe I already do value small things. I’ve also long understood the importance of pausing frequently to celebrate accomplishments of all sizes. I’ve known that…
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Wholeness: a Good Word and a New Year
Wholeness – it’s my word for the new year. Some years a word has served me better than a resolution. A word’s given guidance when I didn’t know where I was going, let alone what steps to take to get there. When the world keeps changing, or when I’m considering what’s important in a new…
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Living in Color: Working with the Difficult Parts of Our Lives
In “Quietness” the Sufi mystic poet Rumi speaks of taking an axe to one’s prison wall and walking out “like someone suddenly born into color” (trans. by Coleman Barks). It’s left me thinking of how many prisons humans build – both literal and metaphorical – and how often they do not serve the purposes of…
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On Mental Illness, Silence, and Suddenly Color
There are many reasons we have difficulty talking about mental illness. Those silences have shaped my new novel, Suddenly Color: A Sacred Grounds Novel Book 2.
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Pausing with Whatever: Practices of a Monk in the World
The titles on my bookshelves don’t fully reveal what those shelves or their books actually hold. Because I have the habit of tucking notes into my books for safekeeping, I never quite know what will fall out when I open a book. Not a great organizational method for my correspondence, this tucking away of notes…
About the author
Callie J. Smith writes about women who, like her, are finding themselves. Her stories and essays explore everyday things like hope, creativity, and grief.
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Callie J. Smith 