Stories, songs, and thoughts on life.
I am currently accepting voice, piano, and violin students. Learn more or
18 May 2016
What is the role of government? More specifically, is it the government’s job to tell private business owners who they shall or shall not allow into their restrooms? Is it the government’s job to tell private business owners who they shall or shall not bake a cake for?
19 February 2015
As I drive through the thick snow, barely seeing far enough ahead to stay on the road, my eye catches movement on the ground to the right. It’s a little squirrel, sitting by the road as calm as can be. He is unfazed by the biting cold, stoically chewing a little tidbit he’s scrounged up. I wonder where he’ll go after that and where he lives. I wonder what he thinks, if he thinks anything at all.
12 February 2015
If nothing else, the wild popularity of the 50 Shades books and the up coming movie should prove, once and for all, that lust is not a male problem. It’s a human problem.
11 December 2014
Backtrack with me about seventeen years. Thirteen-year-old Amanda stands in front of the mirror. Staring back at her is a huge pair of thick glasses, a smattering of pimples over whatever face isn’t covered by the glasses, a smile that reveals some crooked teeth, clothes that stick out in every awkward direction because she’s too skinny for most of them to drape nicely, a flat chest, and…oh, those glasses.
06 November 2014
Using six-year-olds to get attention albeit for a “worthy cause” seemed an all-time new low. I fully intended to put it out of my mind and go about my business. I realized today that I kind of have to say something about it.
16 October 2014
I stumbled across an entry from January 26, 2010. I’m going to share it here, because I did find it encouraging.
25 September 2014
Some pieces of music are like food to my soul. I can play them over and over again and never get tired of them. They evoke a response from me that usually involves silence and awe. I’m listening to one of them right now. L’isle Joyeuse (The Happy Island), is a composition for piano written by Claude Debussy.
20 August 2014
There’s an article making the rounds on Facebook called “Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed.” I read it sometime last week and found it to be quite interesting, though I didn’t agree with most of it. It did, however, hit a nerve, and judging from the reaction I’ve seen from many of my friends, I was not the only one.
I’ve noticed a lot of “wise” words about “toxic people” lately, and they tend to bother me. For instance, “Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.” (Robert Tew) At first, it sounds like a reasonable motto. But what exactly are toxic people?
28 May 2014
A common theme throughout the Bible is that God usually does give us what we want. That sounds pretty good until you realize that getting what you want isn’t always a sign of God’s blessing or that what you want is a legitimate, holy desire in the first place.
27 March 2014
Expressing God, not myself, is my full-time job now. Or at least it ought to be. And we creative people need to get that and own it. If we make movies, write novels, take or paint beautiful pictures for the purpose of self-expression, than we’ve grandly missed the point.
31 October 2013
Last Saturday, I had a book signing in Battle Creek. At the appointed time, I made my way to Barnes and Noble and walked up the information desk. “Hi, I’m Amanda Barber here for the book signing,” I began. The girl on the other side looked back at me, confused. “Book signing?” Just then, the acting manager came up and the girl said something like, “There’s a book signing today?”
09 July 2013
Early last month, I visited the family. One sunny morning, I was sitting out on the back porch, grooming one of the family dogs. Miles came wandering out with a toy train or something. His dreamy face told me he was lost in his own little world. He was driving his toy around and making up sound effects as he went along. When the sound effects died down, a random thought passed through my mind.
19 May 2012
We humans are excessively good at swinging on pendulums from one extreme to another and never finding that very calm and less dizzy spot in the middle on many issues. The one I will expound upon involves the two simplest words in the English vocabulary, “Thank you.”
12 May 2012
At various times throughout my childhood, my dad was a Christian school teacher, a pastor or both. Any way you look at it, he wasn’t rolling in the dough. Most of the time he was only scraping up enough flour to make a thin paste.
26 April 2012
From my limited knowledge of his thoughts, I understand Nietsche’s ideal society to be a place of raw individualism, free of society’s constraints. In such a place, individuals would live for themselves and their own interests. Freely chosen action without regard to anyone’s opinion but one’s own is the theme of Nietzsche’s writings.
27 March 2012
In my Advanced Composition class, I wrote a Rogerian response to another student's editorial promoting nudism.
10 March 2012
It wasn’t that I wanted a story about God. I was looking for specific information.
03 February 2012
When I was in my early teens, I used to tell people that I wrote better than I talked. At the time, I wasn’t sure I liked that facet of my personality. Being a quiet person in a culture which places high value on extroversion can be a trial...