Surviving Christmas alone: how your faith can help you through it

Many articles have been written about surviving Christmas alone. Most of these articles deal with finding a way to break free from being alone. Service in homeless shelter, finding a family or group of friends to join for the holidays, or throwing your own party are common suggestions. Yet, there are times when you are truly alone, and survival tactics for this wilderness of true aloneness are necessary for your emotional and mental health. This season of anticipated joy is filled with many people who find themselves far from home, have few to no friends, or are in the midst of a tragedy such as a death of a loved one or a divorce.

The following six steps might be just enough to help you survive being alone on Christmas...click for the rest of the article

I Am No Poet (a silly poem with lessons on rhyming built within)

So, I thought I would write a poem for a humor poetry contest. Instead I ended up with this poem, which teaches rhyming styles by modeling them and mentioning them throughout the verses. Now the side notes on what styles are referred to in each stanza are not meant to be in the body of the poem. They are just there for this blog post. This is certainly one of the silliest things I have ever written.


I am No Poet (a dirge of commonness)

I am no poet (1) broken rhyme
and I know it
I am broken
I always blow it

my strange addiction (2) double rhyme
sad affliction
is oft doubled
within my diction

I have tried to hide (3) assonant Rhyme
my moral bind
but lessons lurk
within ass'nant lines

repeating within (4) inside repetition
my mortal sin
it lunges large
and it screams again

I have tried to end (5) simple, masculine
this single trend
be masculine!
but I always bend

now trying to quit (6) consonant rhyme
but never quite
cons'nant struggle
not ever quiet

I can not fake it (7) imperfect rhyme
please or placate
imperfectly
out falls my mistake

If given an or-ange (8) scarce rhyme
squeezed like syringe
scarce my options
still all will cah-ringe

this evil duress (9) light/unstressed
lightly unstressed
would fall away
If I weren't careless

with my dreams too high (10) wrenched rhyme
it cuts to my
soul so wrenched it
pains me but few cry

This, my rich idol (11) Rich Rhyme - homonyms
once thought idyll
now I find that
it leaves me idle

repeating my words (12) identical repetition
my type of words
identical
repetitious words

like macaroni (13) Macaronic Rhyme/multilingual
plain bolonga
it will be known
gwladwr ydw'i



so I am destined (The Final Mourning)
to be questioned
and ridiculed
whenever mentioned

wrong time to be born
now I must mourn
hanging my head
live up to my scorn

You see, in this time
metered sublime
free verse is loved
but poets can't rhyme