Category Archives: Bible study

Bible study, books, Carlyle, Christianity, Emerson

A Coincidence of Reading

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I completed this book yesterday, from a Word doc from Project Gutenberg, uploaded to my Kindle library. My second reading of it.

I’m usually reading several things at once. I have a reading pile in the sunroom, where I go around noon most days to get a break from my tasks. That reading usually consists of printed books, and sometimes a magazine. I have a reading pile in the living room as well, and a basket of magazines I’m way behind on. This is usually evening reading, after all else is done for the day.

Then there’s my phone, through which I read using a Kindle app, a Nook app, and Google books. My phone I might use anywhere, and the things I read on it usually are easier reads. That may not be the best description. But I think they take a little less concentration and can be read in places such as waiting rooms, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. Any place I have a few minutes and want to engage my mind with more than people watching.

So yesterday, I read a little more than normal, and to my surprise, I finished reading four different items on the same day. How odd is that?

I always enjoy reading Poets & Writers magazine, and, on those rare occasions when I buy an issue, I read it slowly, enjoying each article. I even look at the ads.

In the sunroom, I finished reading an issue of Poets & Writers magazine. I buy one of these at Barnes & Noble from time to time. While this mag is very much oriented towards the Master of Fine Arts crowd and is far from my writing world, I enjoy it more than other writing mags. Anyway, I had only two pages left in this particular issue, and finished those pages yesterday. At a future writers meeting I will pass this along to someone.

Still in the sunroom, I next looked at an essay I’ve been slogging through on Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Years ago I downloaded this from the Bulletin for Biblical Research and printed it (at a time when the company I worked for had a generous policy of making personal copies). I may have read most of it before but, having come across it in a notebook while working on my near-continuous dis-accumulation efforts, I decided it was time to read it, absorb what it said, and get rid of it. The essay is about 60 pages long, heavily footnoted.

While I enjoyed reading it, the article was a bit of a chore to get through. When I started yesterday, I had about ten pages left to read. Maybe I had come to an easier part of the magazine, or maybe my mind was better engaged, but I got through those last pages. I’m not quite ready to discard the sheets, but within a couple of months I’ll extract the info I need from it to go into a future Bible study I plan to write.

Then, in the evening, I finished the last nine pages (of 633 total) in a biography of David Livingstone. This tome took me three months to get through, though admittedly I laid it aside several times to read other things. Other than the small print, and smaller print on the extensive quotes from Livingstone’s letters and journal, it wasn’t a hard read. Ten pages at a time was fairly easy to get through. And if I hadn’t been reading other things simultaneously, I think I would have been able to finish this in a month. It’s done now, and will likely take two blog posts to review.

Lastly, I finished re-reading Volume 1 of the correspondence between Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Years ago, long before Google Books and Kindle, I found this at Project Gutenberg, downloaded both volumes, and formatted them in Word for a blend between tight printing and easy reading. Using those printing privileges, I printed them and put them in notebooks. Meanwhile, I have recently learned how easy it is to upload a Word document to Kindle for your personal library. I did that with Vol. 1.

As I’ve said many times before, I love reading letters. Wanting something “light” for those odd moment reads, I sent this to Kindle and began reading it perhaps a month ago. I found it delightful, as I did perhaps 20 years ago. Yesterday, I came to the end of Volume 1.

This is sort of waste-of-time reading, since I have so many things to get through. But it was quite enjoyable. I was able to read it fairly quickly, including in the hospital last week with Lynda. At some point yesterday, I read a letter by Emerson to Carlyle, and was surprised to find it the last in the volume. So I promptly found Vol 2 on my computer and uploaded it to my Kindle library. Not sure when I will start this.

So, that’s the story of the strange circumstances that had me finishing four very different reads on the same day. It’s unlikely to ever happen again.

Time to pick up some new reads. One I’m already 40 pages into. What else will I pick up next?

Bible study, Christianity, Writing

From Fog to Sun

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Dateline Sunday, 8 January 2023

Today began with the temperature 10 or 15 degrees below yesterday’s low. The caused a thick fog to be about, so thick that I didn’t feel like driving to church on the high-speed interstate that is the quickest route. So I went through town on the slower roads. The closer I got to the church, the thicker the fog. Yet, going slowly and having a well-marked road, as well as enough traffic to see the road ahead of me clearly.

I’m hoping that, by the end of the year, this will not be the only Bible study in my bibliography.

Thus, the drive to church was easy. I had to be there a bit early due to a schedule change in the new year and a desire that all the adult Sunday school teachers be in the lobby at certain times today. I had to take my computer upstairs first, set it up, and log into the Zoom account we are using for those who can’t come to class. Except I couldn’t log in and had to hunt someone down to get the 6-digit code to log in. Eventually I logged in, we held the class, and the new lesson series for the new year started well.

Church was good, except for the announcement that our minister of music is leaving for another church. So at present we are without a pastor, soon to be without a music minister, and have a temporary, parttime youth minister. But we will carry on. Spirts are good, workers available, and the cause will continue.

Upon exiting church, I saw that the fog had lifted. Bright sunshine and still cool temperatures were invigorating.

This afternoon, after a small lunch, I went to the sunroom to read. I got some read in a writers magazine and in an essay related to some Bible study lessons I’m writing, got them done, and fell asleep. I was in a bit of a sleep deficit due to my wife’s heart episode last night (no details required) and getting up early to study my lesson. After that. Lynda and I went for a two-mile walk, then it was reading and supper.

We watched some TV, including Midsummer Murders and All Creatures Great and Small. To multi-task while watching, I worked on the Bible study series I want to write at least part of this year. It’s a multi-volume series. In February we’ll start with Part 5 of the six-year Lenten/Easter series. One volume is about 95% done, and another somewhere around 40%. But, as I’ve worked on writing the book form of Parts 3 and 4, I’ve come to see that the way the series was broken up to teach didn’t make sense in book form. So I played around with it and felt a lot of fog—lack of a clear path on how to structure the split of the books.

I finally settled on dividing the series into eight separate books. What we taught the first year really needs to be two book volumes, and what we taught the third year needs to be two volumes. That, I think, would make it easier for people to use for a series of Bible studies.

However, it’s still a little foggy to me, this lesson series, and so I have to call that a tentative decision. I’ll have to perhaps work with it a little more. Maybe it could be seven volumes, not eight. I have some work to do on that.

But at least I made a little progress. The eight volumes will work (and, I should say, these are not meant to be big books: maybe 35,000 to 40,000 words each). Perhaps by morning the fog will have lifted and I’ll have better clarity on the issue. I hope so.

Bible study, Documenting America, letters, The Forest Throne, Writing

2023 Goals

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A few days ago, I gave some January goals. I did that before I had given a lot of thought to 2023 as a whole. I’ve since been able to do that, and have come up with some goals for the year. Here they are.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study.
  • Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution.
  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to go, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done.

Since these are goals covering a full year, and since way leads on to way along this path through the woods, I reserve the right to change these as the months go by. Possibly there will be updates. If not, look for a post in late December 2023 as to how I did in 2023 relative to these goals.

Bible study, books, The Forest Throne, Writing

2022 Recap

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This was one of my two new publications in 2022.

In terms of my writing career, what can I say about 2022? It was productive, but not overly so. That seems to be the best I can say.

As 2022 started, I finished the first draft of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel, and was ready for beta readers and to figure out what to do about a cover. Also finished, and not yet published, was our church’s Centennial book. I had finished it—all I could see to do on it—in October, and was waiting on proofreading and editing. So two books were essentially ready to go to publication.

While waiting for those to projects to grind through to publication, I began writing a Bible study. Our Sunday school class has been studying Holy Week, during the run-up to Easter. It is a multi-year effort. In a few weeks we will start our fifth part of this, the Roman trail. I had no intentions of developing this into a published Bible study, but in early 2022 said, “Why not?”

I began with what we studied in 2021, the Last Supper. That was our third year. I made some progress on it, then came the time to teach the fourth year, Gethsemane and arrest of Jesus and the night trials. I found writing it as I was teaching it much easier than trying to write what I had taught in prior years.

I count sales of these in the year’s total, even though it wasn’t a royalty producing project.

I worked on the current year and the previous year simultaneously. By the time the end of April rolled around, I had the current year’s mostly done, the previous year’s about 40 percent done, and a plan for the entire series. Although it is a six-year study, I came to see it should have been a seven-year study and that the published books should be divided into smallish seven volumes.

That’s when other things got in the way of writing. That included the three special projects, as well as a number of things around the house and health concerns. Writing lagged behind. Publication went forward, however. The Centennial book was published in April and seemed to be well accepted. TNSTATT was published in June. On-line sales are nonexistent, but in person sales have happened, with much effort and pushing on my part.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on.

In July I began work on the next book in The Forest Throne series, titled The Key To Time Travel. After delays of putting a major effort into it, I knuckled down in December and finished it. It is now waiting on beta readers, as well as for me to edit it. Early chapters have passed muster with my critique group.

The Kuwait Letters book is done. This is the final cover—before the typo was fixed. Now done, distributed, and un-published for now.

Two other publications in 2022 were letters collections. One of these was the letters with my good friend, Gray Boden, as a tribute to him after his passing in 2020. I suspect this book will soon be un-published, as it actually includes items for which I don’t have permission of the writer (i.e. copyright holder) to publish. The other was the collection of letters from our Kuwait years. Copies of his have been obtained by all family members that want them and has been unpublished. These were not really commercial ventures, but took time away from what could have been time on writing and marketing books.

I took part in three author events near the end of the year, and spoke three times to the letter writers society I’m a part of. I wasn’t aware of any other events I could have participated in. I’m hoping 2023 will see more of them.

I wound up selling 279 books, my highest year ever. Without the Centennial book (which I count as sales for me even though it was a non-commercial venture), I would have been a little behind 2021 sales.

So I enter 2023 with a completed, unpublished project, two works-in-progress and another soon to start. Here’s hoping and praying that 2023 will be more productive than 2022 was.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne, Writing

December Progress, January Goals

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It’s a quiet morning at Blackberry Oaks. Ten people in the house and, at 7:19 a.m., I’m the only one up—unless some are up and quiet in the basement. It has been a good post-Christmas celebration, one that will continue for a few more days.

So I’m going to give a somewhat quick progress and goals post. I may come back with a follow-up post later, when I’ve had more time to think about it. First, how did I do relative to my December goals?

  • Finish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I managed to do this. Added the last words on Dec. 16. About time to edit it.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. Yes, did this, with real posts, not just fillers.
  • Attend three writers’ meetings. I may even slip in a fourth. Just three this month. I decided to to forego the fourth.
  • Read at least some of the Bible study I’ve set aside. I’m going to read it for my own morning devotions. Yes, I’ve been doing this. I’m now up to the fifth chapter, out of seven. Each chapter is divided into seven parts, providing a daily reading for those who want to do it that way. That’s how I’m reading it right now. It has been a blessing to me as I read. Of course, the writer/editor in me can’t help but fix typos as I’m reading for devotions. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.

Now, to make a few modest goals for January, 2023.

  • Edit The Key To Time Travel, at least once and hopefully twice.
  • Finish one pass through A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 4. If time allows (which it should), make a true editorial reading of it. Also, write whatever introduction is needed, and whatever ending makes sense.
  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend four writers meetings this month. The one I sometimes make, sometimes miss, is a lunch brainstorming session, which I plan to go to.
  • Work on at least one other part of A Walk Through Holy Week, probably Part 3, which is already well along.
  • Plan out the next part of A Walk Through Holy Week. I will be teaching that in February through April, and last year I found it was easier to write the current part than one from a previous year.

That’s plenty. I’ll review these over the next week, after things calm down here, and see if this makes sense.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne

November Progress, December Goals

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Regular readers will recall that I did not post goals for November. Right around the first I was much preoccupied with life, and writing a progress and goals report was beyond my capabilities. But it’s now a new month. I’m writing this on Dec. 1st to post on the 2nd, and I’ll do my end of the month normal post.

First, the goals, for which you have to go way back to October to see.

  • Complete some significant work on The Key To Time Travel. I will have four days (starting today) where I will be somewhat cloistered, and hope to write 4,000 words those days. For the month I’ll double that and set a goal of 8,000 words. With a little discipline, that is quite do-able. Alas, I did almost nothing the last two months, not even on those “cloistered days.” I did some editing based on critique group comments, but almost no new writing.
  • Finish the Bible study A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I should get a report on viability soon. Indeed, a preliminary report on that indicates it is good. Note that, if I’m not mistaken, this is a renumbering of the Bible study, splitting part 1 into two and renumbering those after it. I did nothing on this. I finally heard back from a beta reader, and he proclaimed it good.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in person. Actually, I may fit in a fourth meeting. I’m also considering joining in on an on-line group. I attended my regular meetings in October and November. There were a couple of more I could have gone to, but was satisfied with the ones I did attend. I also had two author events in November, which took up time.

What about goals for December?

  • Finish The Key To Time Travel. I know, I know. I can hear my regular readers laughing, after all the failures to achieve even modest goal for this book. But my special projects are done; only a few straggler items remain to be put in place. So I should be able to spend a lot of time on it. Monday to Thursday this week, I wrote over 5,000 words on it. I’m on a roll. I have most of the plot items reasonably well worked out. I hope to finish this and give it to my grandchildren to read before the end of the month.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
  • Attend three writers’ meetings. I may even slip in a fourth.
  • Read at least some of the Bible study I’ve set aside. I’m going to read it for my own morning devotions. Since it’s been around six months since I’ve even looked at it, I’ll be coming at it kind of cold, so it might be a good test of how well the Bible study reads for its daily reading feature.

That’s it. See you all on January 2 with a report.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne

September Progress, October Goals

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Yes, the last day of the month is here. Time to give a report of my stewardship of my time and reveal what I got done for the month and what I didn’t. Also time to set some goals for October. First, the progress.

  • Attend 3 writers group meetings, all in person, including making a presentation at the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society on 9/13. Did this, and my presentation at the NWALWS went well, with reasonably good attendance.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday, as always. Got this done, with no filler posts
  • Concentrate my limited writing time on The Key To Time Travel. I won’t put a word or chapter goal. I’m in the middle of Chapter 2 currently. I worked very little on this. I looked at it, read it all over, made some edits. But I don’t think I added more than 200 words. Next month should be better.
  • Figure out how to make a trailer for my Bible study, Death Kindly Stopped For Me. It will be a simple trailer, but lots to study to make it happen. I worked on this, but wasn’t able to get it done. I have a power point done, but can’t figure out how to make it run automatically.
  • Hopefully, get back to work on the two Bible studies I set aside a couple of months ago. One needs only an introduction and maybe 1,000 more words in the narrative to be finished. The other I estimate at 70 percent finished. Sure would be nice to find an hour here and there to work on them. Did not work on this at all, other than to touch base with the retired pastor who is reviewing one of them, to see when I might have his input.

So, it wasn’t a very productive month in terms of writing. But, in terms of special project, it was productive. I finished the Stars and Stripes inventory on Monday. On Wednesday I had a very good day digitizing letters, and am close to the end of the notebook I’ve been working on. The overall project is a long way from being done, but progress is being made. I’m at the point where soon I’ll feel good about backing off somewhat and getting back to writing.

And so, here are my goals for October.

  • Complete some significant work on The Key To Time Travel. I will have four days (starting today) where I will be somewhat cloistered, and hope to write 4,000 words those days. For the month I’ll double that and set a goal of 8,000 words. With a little discipline, that is quite do-able.
  • Finish the Bible study A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I should get a report on viability soon. Indeed, a preliminary report on that indicates it is good. Note that, if I’m not mistaken, this is a renumbering of the Bible study, splitting part 1 into two and renumbering those after it.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in person. Actually, I may fit in a fourth meeting. I’m also considering joining in on an on-line group from time to time. Just considering, for right now.
  • Blog twice a week. I have a number of book reviews lined up.
  • Continue with special projects. That’s not necessarily writing related. In October, I expect to finish digitizing the letters notebook I’m working on, and to finish proofreading the Kuwait Letters book. I’d like to say I will also finish adding photos to it and reformatting it, but that might be a bit much.

So there it is. A little more ambitious than the September goals. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, The Forest Throne

August Progress, September Goals

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New month, time for a progress report and new goals. First, the progress report. Here are the goals I posted at the beginning of August.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9. Done. My presentation went very well, I think.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I think I missed one day, my first complete miss in a long time. With all that was going on, that wasn’t too bad.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I did not complete this. I worked on one chapter, and got it mostly done in first draft.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella. I worked on TOAV, perhaps a little more than I should have. I have completed five episodes. Now to see how I can program this, how many episodes out. At the moment, I’m thinking of setting it aside and get on other projects.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me. I have now prepared lesson notes for three of the seven lessons in this series. I feel good enough about it that I can definitely schedule it to start in October. Now I need to make a trailer for it. Oops, that goals, not progress.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this. I did a little marketing on this, but not much. Closed two sales.

So it was a so-so month. I’m not unhappy with it. I gave a lot of time to my paper files digitalization project, and likely will be doing that for a few months. That cuts into my writing time.

On to September.

  • Attend 3 writers group meetings, all in person, including making a presentation at the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society on 9/13.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday, as always.
  • Concentrate my limited writing time on The Key To Time Travel. I won’t put a word or chapter goal. I’m in the middle of Chapter 2 currently.
  • Figure out how to make a trailer for my Bible study, Death Kindly Stopped For Me. It will be a simple trailer, but lots to study to make it happen.
  • Hopefully, get back to work on the two Bible studies I set aside a couple of months ago. One needs only an introduction and maybe 1,000 more words in the narrative to be finished. The other I estimate at 70 percent finished. Sure would be nice to find an hour here and there to work on them.

I think that’s it. Possibly more than I can accomplish, but it’s something to shoot for.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

July Progress, August Goals

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First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.

First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.

  • Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
  • Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
  • Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.

What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.

I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne

May Progress, June Goals

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It’s time for progress and new goals. I’ll say right off that I didn’t make as much progress last month as I’d hoped. I got things done, but not all on my list. The busyness may be easing a little, and perhaps June will be more productive.

  • Finish preparing for my presentation to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society at the May 10 meeting. I finished the preparation in good time and made the presentation. Alas, only two people showed up: our leader, and one a friend of mine from church who came to hear me. Possibly I’ll give this presentation again someday.
  • Complete all tasks and publish There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Very do-able, I think. We are so close on this. I began writing this post and this item long before the day of posting. Possibly I’ll be able to edit this, before the post goes live, and say “Done!”
  • Attend writers meetings. There will be 5 or 6 this month, two in person and three or four on-line. I attended the two in-person meetings, and they were good. I decided to back off a little and am taking a break from the on-line group for a while. I attended the first two and left off the last two.
  • Make good progress on the second Bible study while I wait to hear from my beta reader on the first. No, I didn’t get a lot done on this. The unexpected Centennial work, combined with things I had to do around the house, kept me from concentrating enough to complete these. Also, a glitch of some kind meant my beta reader never received the document to review. That’s been corrected now and I’m awaiting that review.
  • Finish those website updates. I think I have less than 30 minutes of work on this. Not done. Such a small item. Will go on the list for June.
  • Complete work on the Centennial research notes. I think this will be another 2 or possibly 3 hours of work. I was not able to find the little bit of time needed to do this. Partly that was due to the Committee asking me to help with a new task, which took a lot more than the couple of hours I wanted to devote to the research notes. Put it on next month’s to-do list.
  • As always, blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. Yes, got this done. In something of a rhythm now.

So much for what I accomplished in May. What’s planned—or hoped for—in June? Some of it will sound much like May’s list.

  • Work on my unfinished Bible study, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 3. Although I still don’t have feedback on Part 4 (I know, this is another out-of-order situation with my writing), I want to at least finish this part.
  • Take a long look at my writing and sales, and decide which of several major projects comes next. I have several directions to go. I don’t anticipate being able to actually start on my next project this month. It would be good, however, to finish the month at least knowing what it is.
  • Finish the Centennial research notes.
  • Finish the updates to my website. That will include adding the new book to my list of publications.
  • Attend two in-person writers groups, or three if you include the letter writers society. I’m not sure when I’ll be getting back to the on-line group.
  • Work on Tales Of A Vagabond. I’ll have to devote a post to this.