Author, Tree Street Kids
[A version of this was originally written for a message I gave at my church, House of Saints and Sinners.] By Amanda Cleary Eastep Endless tips for better writing exist, especially when it comes to “cutting the fluff” of adjectives and adverbs that leave an otherwise solid story looking like this: Photo Credit: ozfan22 via Compfight […]
Read MoreBy Amanda Cleary Eastep Recently, I wrote an article for Think Christian magazine, My Daughter’s Muslim-Christian Bible Study, about the coming together of Christian and Muslim students in the Bible study my daughter started at her local public high school. A better title would have been “When worlds collide…or just meet over Dunkin’ Donuts,” which better illustrates […]
Read MorePhoto Credit: vintage ladies via Compfight cc By Amanda Cleary Eastep Tonight at House, Pastor Chuck talked about one of the most common regrets of the dying…that they didn’t spend more time with their friends. He focused on the friendships of Jesus and the traits good friends possess. The theme of friendship was also the focus of my […]
Read Moreby Amanda Cleary Eastep This photo was taken right before I met a man with a time machine. In the spirit of that, let me back up. I recently discovered an off-the-beaten hiking trail that winds along the banks of a lovely little stream and detours around a tree that reaches like the fingers of a cupped hand […]
Read MoreToday, just a thank you for all the words, Maya Angelou…
Read Moreby Amanda Cleary Eastep My youngest step-daughter and I knelt under the huge pine tree in her yard in Kentucky. We were building a house for the fairies. Sticks, leaves and rocks formed walls, a door and places to sit and rest your wings. I hadn’t been with her dad that long, and this collaborative […]
Read Moreby Amanda Cleary Eastep Clinging to a barrel, my grandfather floats in the Pacific Ocean. His ship, burning, sinks into dark water. A Navy man who has never learned to swim now puts his hope in wreckage. Men he loved, men he didn’t, men he fought beside, die. Some, only brief survivors, escape the vortex […]
Read Moreby Amanda Cleary Eastep I may have to dub this a “glorious weekend.” Between the weather, hours (!) to write, lots of digging in the dirt, and hiking planned for the last day of a four-day weekend…well, just…*heavy sigh of satisfaction.* Last night at church–which we moved outside among the trees–Pastor Chuck asked us to […]
Read Moreby Amanda Cleary Eastep It’s thundering. I’m sitting on my patio watching the first drops hit my just-planted hydrangea and clematis, gifts for Mother’s Day from my children. (Well, one picked them out, the other will contribute when she gets paid, and one is working and may have an Indie band mix CD waiting for […]
Read MoreBy Amanda Cleary Eastep They were Easter to me as a child. Aunt Millie and Uncle Roy walked into our living room, childless but carrying two Easter baskets wrapped in pink and purple cellophane, the kind of baskets you bought at the store, not the ones you made yourself out of strawberry cartons. Aunt Millie, bundled in a […]
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Amanda Cleary Eastep 