Tag Archives: Writing prompt

MY IDEAL HOME: THE VICARAGE

Posted on by under For Family & Fun

EVERY WEEK I AM GIVING MYSELF TWO DAYS TO PRACTICE SOME FORM OF CREATIVE WRITING. THIS WEEK I PRACTICED WRITING A SONNET AND TODAY I AM WRITING IN RESPONSE TO A PROMPT FROM WORDPRESS.

WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL HOME LOOK LIKE?

I have always tried to make the home where I am living an ideal home. I think that the old adage “Home is where the heart is” is really true. Home isa place where the individual is allowed to create an an expression of the heart, a thing that is of and for themselves, a center of the true self.

I think any place can become an ideal home. It just takes work and an ability to allow self expression.

The Vicarage is a place that has given me permission. to express myself and to learn how to work. I didn’t realize it fully until recently, but my heart’s desire is to create a forest garden in the place I live.

This place offers that in spades. It is enough to feel a bit wild and at the same time gives me room to practice cultivation of the wildness.

It is a place that has made room for my mistakes, even welcomed them. Like our first chicken play pen. It was a great idea, poorly placed. Next year though I think I am going to try this space as a pumpkin patch.

The Vicarage has also given me room to develop my spiritual practice of prayer and meditation.

The prayer courtyard has proven to be a place of much spiritual endeavor this summer. I am even now planing my winter prayer nook inside The Vicarage.

This house has been a refuge from the storms of life for many decades of my life. But I think it is because I have learned to make this a place of powerful memory,

enjoyable work

and purposeful existence

that it has become my ideal home. Maybe I could have done that anywhere. Still I am glad it was here.

Three Line Tales: Down Is Down

Posted on by under The Stories, Uncategorized

Sonya at ONLY 100 WORDS has challenged us to write a three line tale from this photo prompt.

My story is below. To find other stories you can follow the underlined link.

DOWN IS DOWN

by JE Lillie

Some say, “It doesn’t matter where you’re going as long as you have the right attitude.”

Other say, “As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else where you end up doesn’t matter.”

I say, “Down is down and no amount of pretending will ever make it up.”

Cuppa’ :S.K.W.P. 85

Posted on by under The Stories

I haven’t played this challenge for a little while but I felt like practicing a little poetry this week and so here is THE SECRET KEEPER’S WEEKLY WRITING CHALLENGE #85

The challenge words this week are

(5) Words: | SCORE | SLEEP | FREE | CALM | ESCAPE |

and I will be writing in the Shadorma form.

Cuppa’

by JE Lillie

Away sleep!

I will escape you!

Free my eyes!

Life awaits.

Free me my bittersweet muse!

Ahh! Scored a cuppa’!

wp-image-2037854342jpg.jpg

Now please take yourself over to the Secret Keeper’s lair to see how others met the challenge. Click the underlined link above.

The Cliff Walk: Writing Prompt #22

Posted on by under The Stories

The SECRET KEEPER has issued our next writing challenge. Our buzz words for the week are:SENSE | SECURE | WALK | TIME | ALONE |

This week I am choosing to put out a flash fiction piece.

The Cliff Walk

Craggy Coast.jpg

By JE Lillie

She has been gone seven years. Still I often come to this place alone to walk along the craggy shore line. I can sense her in the salty wind that whispers through the air with all the poignancy of a lost love, taste her briny kiss across time like some backhanded rejection. It hurts like the shutting of the casket, but I long for it if only to keep her memory alive.

This place, our place, where we first held hands. I remember her smooth fingers slipping against my calloused palm as I helped her over the sea-smoothed rocks to the ocean’s edge so she could wade in the surf. I can still see her holding the legs of her jeans up, trying and failing to keep the ocean from anointing her with the holy water of reminiscence.  She laughed. I laughed in those days before, when the Cliff Walk along the ocean’s edge was not a knife to the heart. Still, a knife to the heart is better than feeling nothing and so I have chosen to return year after year to conjure, if only through tears, the time forever lost.

This time is different.

I climb to the pine-encrusted knoll where we last stood together. I think of that day. Her thin frame was already a ghost held together by bones and tumors, almost gone but not quite. She held my hand like always that day.

“Find someone new.” She whispered.

“Stop.” I said.

We both cried. Her head scarf was lost in the breeze as we kissed for what was to be the final time.

Wiping away a tear I remove the urn from its satchel. I tilt it ever so slightly and let the wind take her ashes.

“Good bye.” I say again, but this time I mean it.

A gentle hand caresses my back. I feel her lips touch my shoulder. As she puts her arm through mine I can see, in the moonlight, she is weeping with me, grieving alongside me. I am secure in the knowledge, my wife would have liked her.