Carrying Our Stories
Recently, I learned to pack a mule…My interest in mule packing began when I read about the packhorse librarians who carried books into remote areas of Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression.
Read MoreCategory: Life between the lines
When the Flood Carried Kindness
The western North Carolina floodwaters had receded enough for my husband to make it to the town nearest our “holler.” There, he gathered with others at the local radio station, all desperate for any Wi-Fi connection that might enable them to get word to family and friends that they were alive and safe.
Read MorePack Horse Librarians Deliver Hope
Why do kids in western North Carolina need books when they don’t have drinkable water? It was hard not to wonder this…
Read MoreLiving between the Lines and What It Reveals about Our Stories
When my son was a young boy, he had a dream that he found me dead beneath a pile of dirty clothes…
Read MoreSettings: the places that shape us
All the seconds run together now, and clocks don’t seem to matter much. Maybe they never did in a place where time and work and rest were measured more by when the rooster crowed and the sun set . . . when the rain came or didn’t and the first frost threatened.
Read MoreFrom Here to Hear
This is a rare morning of solitude. Sitting in the gray light, I feel the damp air sift through the screen door behind me as the smell of rain lays itself across the skin of my bare neck and right shoulder.
I’m listening.
Read MoreTwo stories and one picture from the other side
by Amanda Cleary Eastep We stepped up to our ankles in the cold water, careful to keep our footing on the gray and brown mosaic of smooth stones beneath our pale feet. This simple act was a pinnacle moment–leaving our shoes on the gritty sand of the “bonny, bonny bank” and walking together into Loch […]
Read MoreTravels with a Plantser
By Amanda Cleary Eastep I dragged the line on the Google map from the A1 highway to a road along the coast of the UK that looked like a long piece of birthday crepe paper that had been crumpled up and (uselessly) stretched out again. According to Google calculations, taking that squiggly route instead of […]
Read MoreLook Out, Labor Force. Generation X is coming…right after our hip replacements
By Amanda Cleary Eastep “I’m a Millennial in a Gen Xer’s body,” he said. I was interviewing the former VP of concept and design for McDonald’s for an alumni magazine article. In recent years, his career trajectory had shifted from corporate to the social and public sector, which included a stint in Kenya helping a […]
Read MoreSeismic Shift or Gentle Nudge (& a sneak peek!)
Sneak peek, dear Readers! You will find the rest of this post about “faith shifts” in a new space I’ve been building with author and friend Michelle Van Loon. MORE on that SOON! By Amanda Cleary Eastep I always imagined that someday I would be one of those people who younger Christians look at with a wistful […]
Read More
Amanda Cleary Eastep 