Katherine Wallin

Read all the words that lead up to these here. 

“Dear Atheists, homosexuals, transexuals, lesbians, Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Dear widows and orphans and slaves. Dear homeless man living in the garage beneath my apartment. Dear terrorists, anarchists, and marxists. Dear Mr. President and North Korea. Dear every woman I ever dated, and every porn star I ever saw naked. Dear Comic-Con fanatics, artists, and anyone who still owns a Dell. Dear home-schooled children, bullies, nerds, jocks, heads, geeks, squares, popular kids, and unpopular kids everywhere. Dear Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, and Ryan Gosling.

Dear Everyone.

Dear me.

You are imperfect and judgmental. You are self-addicted and lustful. You are full of hate and sin, pride and secrets. Yet God sees you through the lens of Christ’s Crucifixion: forgiven and without scars, perfect and fulfilled, destined with a purpose the way He intended you to be.

Now put down your stones and go be.

Sincerely,

Just another sinner.”

- Max Andrew Dubinsky

Did you read the rest of Max Dubinsky’s post? Read it here. 

i think all college students, maybe before college even, but certainly by college, should read letters to a young poet.  it cuts through to the heart of what’s of value in life. to really be true to your own spirit. to be awake and develop patience so that you truly understand what it is you’re trying to do, desire, and who in fact you really are. that is not what you’d get from a polemical essay. somebody trying to sway you on how many ears of corn you can grow if you collectivize. it’s a wonderful gift to the planet.

- alice walker, this is the time for poetry

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

_ candyheilman

“At home, where he writes, he no longer has internet access. A four-month stint with wi-fi proved “deadly” for his productivity and having no access at all ensures that he is not tempted to “look at Kajagoogoo videos and old ads for Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum” on YouTube. “Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you’re called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can’t ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn’t written anything for a year.”

Awesome interview with Dave Eggers (of Away We Go and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). He’s funny, in the got-a-good-soul, salt-of-the-earth type of way. Find the rest of the interview here.