Category Archives: On Writing With WordPress’s New Format

Jan28

The Us of Millions Becomes the Me of One, Thank God!

Posted on by
Standard
The Us of Millions Becomes the Me of One, Thank God!

January 28, 2025, 2:15 p.m.
I’ve decided I’m going to try and write everyday, as much as possible. The question, and the problem, is, what do I write about? I’ve never been very good at extemporaneous spontaneity. My mind doesn’t work that fast. I watch TV shows like Who’s Line Is It Anyway? and, in between laughing helplessly at the goofy stuff they do, I wonder how they can come up with all that hilarity so quickly, without thinking about it ahead of time. They manage to pull it off seemingly without rehearsals or any kind of preplanning at all. I don’t know if that’s what actually happens, but that’s certainly the way it looks.

I’m going to include another one of my poems, called The Us of Millions. I wrote it in March of 1990, 13 years before I was integrated in March of 2003. When I wrote this poem, I didn’t think wholeness was possible. Thank God, I was wrong!

My life is composed of blanks and holes,
each one a fragment from a shattered whole.

Each thought a shard,
each event a splinter of death,
camouflaged ground-brown
with the mud of denial.

My life it was,
the priceless vase that contained my soul,
that was my Self,
smashed by maddened tyranny
while yet under potter’s hands.

I purge away the mud
with tears of remembering,
only to find that what was can no longer be,
my baby Self shattered
into splintered confusion.

There is no glue that piece to piece can bring
to peace,
and the I that was Me is forever
the Us of Millions.

S.A. Kuriakos & Elliot
©March 6, 1990

Well, that was fun! I’m learning all kinds of new things in the process of writing blog posts. I decided to include the above poem, and I figured out how to do it using this thing called a Verse Block in WordPress, but I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the Verse Block and back into the regular Paragraph Block. It turns out it’s as simple as clicking on a different button, and I was making a much bigger deal out of it than I needed to. Way cool! Blogging is getting simpler and easier all the time!

Yippee!!

It’s now 6:03 on the 28th, and I’ve managed to accomplish a great deal with God’s help in a little under four hours.

I’m very grateful and glad to know that what I thought was hopeless back when I wrote that poem, wasn’t hopeless at all, but only appeared to be impossible to fix. I forgot that with God ALL things are possible,

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” ~ Mark 10:27, NKJV.

1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that  tribulation worketh patience; 4and patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. ~ Romans 5:1-5, KJV.

I love this passage from the Book of Romans, because it sort of tells the story of my life in a nutshell, and I’m so grateful to God for all the marvelous work He’s done in me to bring me as far as He has. I give Him all the glory, because I certainly couldn’t have done any of it myself, and if He’s brought me this far, I know He’ll take me the rest of the way until my healing is complete,

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:6, NLT.

And with that I think I’m done with today’s writing!

Thank you Jesus!!

Jul13

To Publish Or Not to Publish, That Is the Question.

Posted on by
Standard

I haven’t been able to write much in awhile. I’ve been working on a post, but it’s too long, and I can’t figure out how to shorten it. I’m trying to decide if I should publish it as is and let you all read it, and hope you won’t be bored. The problem is, it contains details that I feel are important in telling the story that I’m trying to tell. I know I’ve published long posts before, but this one is longer than most.

So this post is going to be about whether I should publish the other post. Silly, I know, but that’s where I’m at. And in the process of making my decision, I may meander around a bit here, because sometimes that’s how I think. So if some of what I write here sounds irrelevant, it will only sound that way.

The battery on my laptop died, so I had to purchase a new computer. I got a really fancy new iPad. It has a separate keyboard, and a huge hard drive, At first I didn’t think I’d be able to retrieve anything from my laptop, but God has been resurrecting the battery at different times, so when that happens, I get the things I want and send them to myself in assorted emails. It’s been working quite well. There were a number of Long Dog Sampler charts that I had saved on my hard drive, that I needed, so I was able to send those to myself, plus some of the things I need so I can finish the sampler I’m working on (it’s called Pandemic, and it’s also a Long Dog Sampler design).

There were a whole lot of photos I’d saved that I really wanted, so I’ve been able to get a lot of them as well. I’m still not done, but I’m making progress. In addition, there were a number of papers I had written for various classes that I didn’t want to lose, and I was also able to retrieve them.

Another thing I’ve discovered I can do is that while my laptop is functional I can go through and justify the margins of all the posts that I wrote since I started using the iPad. This is because I haven’t figured out how to justify the margins in WordPress for the iPad ~ at least not yet. Hopefully I will before too long, because I hate unjustified margins. They look so sloppy to me.

It’s been a lot of fun getting all the stuff transferred from the old to the new, and I’m grateful to God for making my laptop available so I can do it. It’s a time-consuming task, but an enjoyable one.

At some point in the near future I’ll post a pic of my cross stitch that I’m working on. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. It’s a huge project, probably the biggest piece I’ve ever made, but I think it will be beautiful once it’s finished.

I think I’m going to publish that post as is with only a little more editing.

See? Meandering around in my thoughts while I’m writing about seemingly irrelevant stuff helped me decide! Thank you, Jesus! And thank you, everyone for being patient with me as I figure it out. I love you all!

Jan29

Trying WordPress’s New Editing Format. We’ll See…

Posted on by
Standard

So what shall I write about today? There are a lot of things running through my mind at the moment. For instance, basketball great Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, on Sunday, January 26, 2020.

Kobe’s death has made me think of a number of things. The first thing I thought of immediately upon hearing of his death was, I hope he was saved. And when I learned that his daughter, Gianna, was with him when the helicopter crashed, my first thought was, I hope they were both saved. And then when I realized there were seven other people on board, including the pilot, and each of them had families ~ in fact, three of the people that were killed were members of the same family. Two others were a mother and daughter.

Well, I’ve tried WordPress’s new format, and I don’t like it. My main problem with it is that I can’t justify my margins. I like justified margins, because it looks much tidier than it does if only the left margin is justified.

And I don’t want anyone to think that by ending my comments so abruptly on the helicopter crash of last Sunday, with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and the other eight people, that I don’t care. I do care deeply, and I was going to write about it no matter what. I’ll probably continue my thoughts once I get back to the other editing scheme.

Now I have to figure out how to go back to the old format…

Twenty Minutes later…

I got back!! Yippee!! The first thing I did was justify the margins. Whew! What a relief!