Waiting on God| For all the Graduates Everywhere | | Posted by Taryn on Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 8:47am |  | Congratulations, graduates! I'd like to share with you my favorite graduation/choosing a life's work quote from Frederick Buechner. What makes you glad?
The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is? Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint or canvas? Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words? Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit? I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives . . . .
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Seasonal Thoughts
| | | | | Failing as a Southerner | | Posted by Taryn on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 5:52am |  | I concede. My friends who were shocked by my choice of the South as a place to settle were right. The first year and a half that I lived here - unemployed, doing freelance writing from home, building connections in my community (with nothing more taxing than meeting people for coffee at The Grind), unleashing my long-suppressed gift of interior decorating – it all worked for me. I was nice. I was polite. People liked me.
Then I got a job. With it came the pressure of deadlines. My latent commandant tendencies, like a sleeping cat, ready to awaken at any moment and pounce with claws extended, came alive. Action beckoned.
Unencumbered by the typical Southern desire to please people, I quickly put an end to my officemate's reponses: “You’re fine. True, Graduation is in two days and the printer did suggest last week as the deadline, but if you want to send in your information tomorrow, that’s OK. I’m more than happy to stay up all night typing it for you and I’m sure the printer wouldn’t mind missing a couple nights of sleep either.”
My mild-mannered garb thrown aside, I turned into that person I try my whole life to squelch – the Field Marshal. I set deadlines. I moved deadlines up a week for the chronically late. I hounded people. And I got everything to the printer exactly on schedule.
But what was the fallout? For sure, my secret identity has been revealed and there’s no hiding anymore. I could interpret the looks. “Well, bless her heart. She can’t help it. She’s from the . . . (voice turning to whisper and eyes cast aside) . . . North.”
But did I hurt anyone’s feelings?
One of my lifelong challenges is how to express my gifts and let them shine without steamrolling over people. In other words, how do I be who God created me to be in the power of the Holy Spirit? Have you figured that out or do you struggle along with me?
Sometimes, it’s the other person’s problem. I mean, callously disregarding deadlines is sort of (gasp!) inconsiderate, isn’t it? But more often than not, it’s me who needs to change. Impatience turns into rudeness, which calls for me to confess and ask forgiveness.
I moved to the South hoping that some of the Southern niceness will rub off on me. I feel like I’ve failed. My sweet Southern friends, with their cultural bent toward extending grace, will try to assure me that I haven’t. They may even say that they need someone like me. I’m not so sure.
Cultural Observations | | | | | My First Ever Writing Award | | Posted by Taryn on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 9:42am |  | I'm thrilled! I've just won my first writing award. Check it out:
http://www.amyfound.org/amy_writing_awards/writings/2011Hutchison.html
The Amy Foundation chooses articles published in the secular press that promote a Biblical world view. They attempt to "recognize creative, skillful writing that applies in a sensitive, thought-provoking manner the biblical principles to issues affecting the world today, with an emphasis on discipling." I feel so honored to have my article selected for such a noble purpose.
It's also a mark of validation. My first published writing happened in 2003, when Women of the Harvest asked me to write about a topic I frequently spoke on – contentment for single women. That launched me on my writing path that I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl filling notebook upon notebook with stories. At that point, I started going to writers’ conferences and studying books about writing, trying to learn as much as I possibly could about the craft. Then I began to pursue this calling in earnest in January, 2006 (even cutting my hours at work to free up one day per week designated for writing). In the six years since then, I have published one book (and had it translated and re-published), three short stories in anthology books, and countless articles and blogs. It’s been a long haul and I’m humbled and thoroughly excited by this award.
Book News | | | | | It's Crunch Time! | | Posted by Taryn on Friday, April 27, 2012 at 5:27am |  | I am now completely embroiled in the busiest time of the year for me in my new job. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I'll take busy over boring any day. My big responsibility right now is printing the programs for all three graduation ceremonies - and the names of graduates, award winners, and who does what literally changes by the hour.
Meanwhile, the students are in their final week of classes, about to begin exams and head out for their summer adventures. Every lunch break is filled with final appointments with students in Cru (Campus Crusade). Several are graduating, and about 25 are going on projects all over the U.S. and world. I'll miss them, and the campus will probably feel like a ghost town once they have left.
It's an exciting time. If a few more days than usual pass between my posts, you'll know why. Hope you are surviving your own crunch time. Ramblings | | | | | Holocaust Remembrance Day | | Posted by Taryn on Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 12:21am |  | Tonight (April 18) at sundown starts the internationally recognized Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date comes from the Hebrew calendar and corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah.
In light of this solemn day of reflection, I will repost a blog I wrote from Krakow, after visiting Auschwitz last spring.
June 6, 2011:
It's been well over a week since we were in Auschwitz. I've needed time to process and couldn't write about what I saw there until now.
This was my second visit to Auschwitz. This time, green grass and tour buses seemed incongruous with death. The last time, in winter in the early 1990s, the starkness was appropriately tangible. The season of the year and the season in Poland's recovery from Communist oppression had added up to few visitors. There had been no signs asking people to be respectfully quiet; yet silence had wrapped us in its black cloak as we walked under the infamous "Arbeit macht frei" sign.
Approximately 1.2 million people entered the dual death and concentration camp of Auschwitz; one million did not leave. The few survivors endured unspeakable, inhuman torture. We saw piles of eyeglasses, hair, children's clothes. Hardest for me to view were the photographs taken of prisoners as they entered. Their haunting eyes pierced and convicted. When liberated, those eyes had become apathetic, sunken in the bodies of skeletons.
During this trip, Steve and I have also visited several synagogues and Jewish ghettos. It seems that every city in Europe has an ugly history of hatred towards Jews. At the end of World War II, thousands of Jewish bodies were found in the streets of the Budapest ghetto. In Krakow, every one of the 68,000 Jews were deported or killed. In Prague, the 1,000-year-old Jewish cemetery houses 20,000 graves, 12 layers deep. Human beings, created in the image of God, treated far worse than animals.
And yet, even in that hell called the Holocaust, there were a few faint lights. Oskar Shindler in Krakow and Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest saved thousands from murder. Priest Maximilian Kolbe asked to die in the place of a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz. After liberation, the Jewish prayer to the "God of all mercy" was recited over bodies finally receiving their burial in Poland. I believe with all my soul that God is merciful and yet I understand if those people who endured the Holocaust stopped believing.
When I asked our guide at Auschwitz how he was able emotionally to see this every day, he said his life mission is to tell people the truth so this horror will never happen again. We must never ever forget.
Current Events | | | |
|
About Me My Book  Soft Cover | We Wait You Soft Cover Retail: $17.99 Our Price: $13.13 ISBN:
1-4141-1174-6 |
 Buy This Book NowAnd Also ... Categories
|
Subscribe 
Print this
Permanent Link
E-mail a friend
Add a comment
View Archive
Top 
Authorized Log-In
