By Nancy Patrick I think I have become more naïve in my senior years than I was in midlife. I ponder such ideas as motivation, value, family, forgiveness, understanding, and all the other virtues Galatians 5:22-23 lists as fruits of the Spirit: joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I want to believe that most people exhibit goodness.
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By Nancy Patrick I used to love playing with kaleidoscopes. I hardly ever see them these days, probably because people can do so many entertaining things on the computer. The kaleidoscope is small, personal, and physically manipulated by the user. The kaleidoscope never bored me because every time I twisted the end cap, all the bits of colored plastic rearranged
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By Nancy Patrick I just had a shocking revelation about myself. As I looked through old essays I had written years ago, I thought I might find one to revise and send to Loretta for Spirit of Abilene. I found the title “An Immodest Proposal: A Perspective on the Survival of the United States.” I thought, “What a great title!”
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By Glenn Dromgoole Nancy Patrick is a regular contributor to Spirit of Abilene. Her pieces are upbeat, thoughtful, insightful. I always enjoy what she has to say. Nancy also writes something else very well, something we all should do more of. Nancy writes compliments. Compliments. I wrote a light-hearted piece last week about how I love chicken legs, or drumsticks. There wasn’t
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By Nancy Patrick As I sat on my canopied swing in the backyard one Saturday morning in May, the soft breeze gently ruffled the leaves on the three-year-old burr oak tree near me. Another three-year-old tree, a Chinese Pistache, grows across the yard from the burr oak. Both trees are doing amazingly well for our Texas climate. We had to
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By Nancy Patrick The older I get, the more I live in the past tense. I mean this, not a figurative statement, but one based in reality. Of course, at seventy-five-years of age, logic tells me that in all likelihood I have lived more than 75 percent of my life. I know some people of my generation sadden when thinking
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By Nancy Patrick I began thinking about this topic years ago as I ate lunch one day in Applebee’s in Waco. I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between a mother and teenage daughter at a nearby table. As they discussed an upcoming family event’s guest list, the girl expressed her hope that her dad, who was divorced from her
Read moreBy Nancy Patrick As far as I know, all parents want to provide a healthy, nurturing environment in which to rear their children. My husband and I spent a lot of time trying to plan our small family’s future. We waited seven years into our marriage to have our son Jason and decided not to provide any siblings. From the
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By Nancy Patrick About two years ago, a friend asked me what “woke” meant. It just so happened that I had learned the new usage a couple of weeks before when I had read a magazine article about it. Modern language contains many new words and usages. As an English major and former English teacher, I find anything related to
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