Blog to Believe

Blog to Believe…

 

Even if you do not believe in God, you must admit there is a higher power.  Where else would creativity come from, if not from a more evolved being?  We don’t go around saying: “Thank, God” for nothing.  How about “God bless you” when someone sneezes?  These few examples demonstrate that people, even those reluctant ones, believe in something they can’t explain.  Someone they have never seen.

 

I have a sign that goes up over the front door at Christmas.  It is one word: Believe.

 

What specifically does that mean?  I see it as believing in life and believing in the power of giving, the power of family, the power of a story that happened thousands of years ago in a little town far, far away.  The birth of a baby is a miracle, and perhaps the humanizing of believing began with the little boy in the manger, just a way of bringing us to a level of understanding.    

 

It is not so much that one needs to embrace this concept, but more the symbolism of what the miracle of the birth of believing is about, that which is inside each of us.  Because inside each of us, is where God resides.  We were made in His image and likeness, again words to humanize believing.

 

We are all blessed in some way and we all have talents that no human being could give to us, no amount of genetics could pass on.  There is a knowing that some things we must simply believe exist without reason, like prayer working, and no one knows why.

 

So to blog about believing is to blog about what we can not see, hear, smell, or touch.

 

Believing is not tangible.  Believing is a gift from God. 

 

Blog what you feel.

 

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

http://www.lindamerlino.com

http://www.kunati.com/linda-merlino

      

Angel Blog

 

I met an angel the other day.  She did not have wings, or a long flowing gown.    Encountering an angel isn’t always apparent in the first few minutes.  There is a brief introduction where his or her identity is hidden from view.  I’ve probably missed dozens of opportunities because I was too busy or distracted to pay attention, to listen, or to be aware.

 

There are all kinds of angel activity swirling around us, so much in fact that we can often mistake it for coincidence or accident.  But there is no such thing as coincidence, nothing happens outside the master plan; which means we have so much to believe, and even more to chalk up to blind faith.     

 

The interjecting of angel wisdom has no pattern of whys and when’s.  Sometimes it is just to help find a missing shoe or our keys.  We get flack from non-believers when we talk out-loud about such things, in all honesty I simply say thank you and keep it to my self.

 

How about the other morning when I was wondering where I could get single dollar bills at four thirty a.m. to tip my baggage handlers at the airport.  I’d thought of everything for my trip except that, and then getting dressed I put my hand in my jeans and in the pocket was a freshly washed and dried bundle of one’s.  Huh, you say…see what I mean I reply.

 

I am deep into the marketing and selling of my new book, Belly of the Whale.   There is little time for much else except going to work and occasional sleep.  My next manuscript has few pages written, most of the story is still in my head.  I continue to collect data and research and sometimes put words on a page, but mostly I blog for writing and compose new emails and have abandoned my usual morning book-writing-routine.

 

A random connection to a woman I met in my travels proved to be this writer’s gem, or more correct another angel.  We were discussing the past and present of places we’d been and lived.  She revealed a snippet of her past and I had to stop and sit down.  Here was the key to unlock the door to my next book.  This woman had been to where I was going in my story.  Although fiction, her experience was not, I had to tell her, about the angel thing I mean.

 

Do you believe in angels?  I asked.  She said, yes.  You are my angel today, I said.  She smiled and said thank you.  No, it is me that needs to say thanks, we need to talk more, I said.  Anytime, she offered.

 

Do not dismiss happenstance, say a prayer or mouth a thank you to those no-entities that offer guidance and good humor everyday.  Perhaps, like me, your questions will be answered.

 

Blog what you hear, see, think and feel.

 

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

http://www.lindamerlino.com

http://www.kuati.com/linda-merlino

order on: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640188

 

 

Pink Ribbon Blog

 

This blog is about cookies, pink ribbon cookies.  My grandmother passed on a recipe to me many years ago for Italian biscotti’s.  Making these cookies became a childhood tradition.  The feel of flour on our hands, the roll of dough under our fingers that snaked long as we worked it and using just the right sharp knife to snip off four inch pieces, that then got twisted into a fold over, ribbon-like shape.  This memory stays with me and last week when I was preparing for my book’s launch I thought about grandma’s cookies.   

 

A book signing event should not just be about books.  What else could I include that might spark conversation and send the message of hope and survival to people walking by or browsing the bookstore?  Potential Belly of the Whale book buyers might be hungry and while waiting for me to sign their recently purchased book(s) they might munch on a cookie or two. With these thoughts in mind I baked several dozen biscotti’s.

 

As a child after the cookies were made, we mixed milk with confectioner’s sugar, drizzled some over the baked cookies and added colorful sprinkles as decorations.  For my book signing cookies I made pink icing and no sprinkles.  Fight-the-fight is part of the message I like to remind folk about, and for every cookie eaten at my book launch I imagined another battle with breast cancer being won.

 

Someone at the book signing asked if my grandmother made the cookies.  I said, no not these, she’s been gone for almost thirty years, but I’m sure she is smiling down from wherever she is today.  That much I know is true.

 

The biscotti’s and the signing were a success.  Looks like I’ll be bringing grandma’s biscotti’s to all my signings.  May the pink ribbon symbol for fighting breast cancer flourish in the form of our family recipe.  May all who eat a cookie be blessed. 

 

Blog what you think, hear and see…Linda Merlino, www.lindamerlino.com

 

 

Blogged to Death

 

The front page of the Sunday New York Times had an article about blogging.  The gist of the news was the stress that blogging puts on a person’s health.  So much stress that two and a half bloggers died within the last several weeks.  The half being the one blogger that almost died but did not.

 

These individuals were tech bloggers.  Blogging about technology can actually bring in a salary, but this profession is highly competitive.  The competition being so intense that some in that blogging world get little sleep, no leisure time, no vacation and basically no life.

 

The term, blogged to death has suddenly taken on new meaning.  My off-handed comment on pulling an all-nighter blogging has lost its humor.  As much as I want to reach out to my cyberspace friends, and as much as I’d like to see how far reaching my blogging can go, I do not want to be found slumped over my keyboard in the throes of polishing off another blog.

 

I send my sympathy to the families of Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant.  To the friends and family of Om Malik I suggest you encourage him to lay off the blogging for his remaining time on the planet.  As for me, I still want people to know about my book, I want to sell thousands of copies and blogging seems to be one way of accomplishing this goal.

 

In an effort not to bore you to death or blog you to demise, I am proposing that  at the first sign of clogging of the blogging arteries, please quit  This condition is right up there with smoking and drinking.  Nothing you blog tonight could be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. 

 

Now ask me if I am going to follow my own advice?

 

Blog what you read, what you think and what you hear.

 

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

http://www.lindamerlino.com

http://www.kunati.com/linda-merlino

 

 

   

Book Blog

 

Blog a book, one book, two or maybe more.  Books are for reading and learning. They feel good against your fingers, often rest on your knees and more times than that, a book fits perfect under your arm.   Old fashion books with well worn pages darkened by turning and re-reading bring comfort to generation after generation.

 

Libraries with shelves and shelves of books in buildings across the world that store history and ancient philosophy have been a refuge to many and a haven for tourists.   A book is the companion you take on a train or on a flight coast to coast.  Hardcover or paperback a book serves to help wile away hours of delays and waiting.  Characters in books take you to places you’ve never been and into lives unlike your own.  There is a door marked escape which you enter when reading a book.  The minute you open the cover you can be swept away.

 

Alas, technology has infiltrated the world of books.  An electronic Deity threatens our library stacks.  Mr. Blackberry is courting Miss Kindle and in no time there will be wedding bells and little Kindleberries running around and soon the paperless book will be favored. 

 

What will happen to the legacy of books when books are electronic exclusives and kindled daily?  Where will we go to smell the scent of leather bound volumes and read newspapers off wooden rails?   Will my blogging a book be a thing of the past?  The thought makes me stop and pause.

 

Belly of the Whale, has just come out in hardcover.  I look at it in awe.  A hardcover has such presence, such clout, and ages well.    

 

To appreciate the continuing advances of convenience is welcome but at the same time disheartening.  Perhaps, in another hundred years a brick building once called a library, built on Main Street USA, will become an electronic word storage tank and folk like me will have become dinosaurs.

 

Blog what you feel, think, hear and see.

 

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

http://www.lindamerlino.com

http://www.kunati.com/linda-merlino

 

 

      

Blog a Prayer

Not being one for dogma, rules and sermons I am not sure if I should be blogging about prayer.  I grew up memorizing the Baltimore Catechism.  For sure I know all the prayers, or at least I did once upon a time.  Out-of-practice is what you might call me, preferring to talk to God in my own language with my own words without kneeling, sitting, or standing on cue. 

I pray most often in my car.  Not the norm, but what I call prayer is far from the traditional version.  The good news is that my kind of prayer has had its success.  What I mean is, many of my prayers have been answered, and other prayers, well others have not.  Those are the ones that went off in an opposite direction from my request, only for me to later realize that if I had gotten what I asked for something else would not have happened, or someone else would not have crossed my path. 

Blogging about prayer is my way of acknowledging the power of talking to God.  Sometimes I don’t even call God, God.  Instead I think of the concept of a higher power or even enlist the mythical gods to speak on my behalf.  I don’t think it matters.  God doesn’t seem to take offense at how I approach my prayers.  

There were times when I would shake my fist at God, and tell him off.  I would call Him a comedian.  I was sure that He and all his seraphim must be holding their sides laughing at me as one obstacle after another came onto my path.  This was how I perceived life unfolding, none of it was fact. 

The truth is I consider myself blessed.  All that tragic-comedy made me a better person.  Without all my run ins with God I would probably not be an author.  Belly of the Whale, my recent release, might still be at the bottom of a drawer.  Some higher being urged me to write; listened to my prayers, endowed me with inspiration and stuck by me when I was discouraged. 

Prayer, no matter how you approach the process, is worthwhile.  Blog a prayer, or say a prayer, either way you will be heard. Blog what you think, what you see, and what you hear.

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

http://www.lindamerlino.com

http://www.kunati.com/linda-merlino