By Janice Lane Palko You’ve seen those Ancestry commercials about people who believe they are one race or nationality and then take a DNA test and find out they are not who they thought they were. My husband could be featured in one of those commercials. This past Christmas, I […]
Pick up the Orange
By Janice Lane Palko Some people receive profound promptings from the Holy Spirit. Me? I get messages like “pick up the orange.” A few weeks ago, I walked into my local grocery store and saw a woman select some oranges and put them in a plastic bag. As she walked […]
The Mysterious Entity Called Inspiration
Someone asked me once about where my inspiration to write something originates. I had never really thought about it, so the following is what I came up with: First of all, I really do not think that I was inspired to write or to be a writer. As a kid, […]
A Holy Spirit Sandwich
“To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit,” promises St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:7. I was born with the natural gift of writing. The Holy Spirit magnified my writing talent into a charism he uses to glorify God. Just as he did for me, […]
Searching for Inspiration?
As writers, we are creative people, yet even creative people can sometimes find themselves stuck for ideas. What do you do when you are drawing a blank, or suffering from “writer’s block”? As Catholic writers, we know that our creativity is a gift from God, so that should be the […]
Investing in Failure
Here’s a concept that helps keep me going through discouragement: Invest in Failure. Josh Waitzkin, in The Art of Learning, uses the phrase to describe his attitude toward mastering new skills. The image of him, beaten and exhausted, going back in for round after round of brutal martial arts practice […]