"A Candle Loses Nothing By Lighting Another Candle" - Father James Keller


Monday, November 24, 2014

Thanksgiving Alphabet Challenge - The Why & The How

I was recently asked to review a book that talked about listing prayers & scriptures by the letters of the alphabet. The purpose was for memorization. They talked about the Hebrew Acrostic Tradition. An example if you’ve never heard of this: The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, and Psalm 111 has 22 lines in the Hebrew text, and each of them begins with the next successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Now, while I didn’t care for the book I read & reviewed, the best thing about it was the resource section in the back which gave me a list of books to add to my TBR list. Plus, it gave other ideas for listing things by the alphabet, one was an exercise to come up with 26 things you are thankful for.

I thought this a good idea this year for the week of Thanksgiving. I’ve had an issue with the holiday since I took a class in college called Minority Literature where we did a study on Native American Lit. I get a little too riled up about the blatant lies in the history books now, and the more I learned over the years, the more I found I had trouble celebrating this holiday. As I continued to study, I learned more about Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning – Read here if you are interested in more information on this: http://www.uaine.org/dom.htm Thankfully, what I’ve gotten from my research was the idea of alternative ways to celebrate, which has become a theme for me in recent years in all of my holidays.



I wish I could remember where it was that I read this, but one native American Indian mentioned (and I’m paraphrasing from my poor memory) being thankful on Thanksgiving for hope, something that could not be taken away from anyone, the hope of better things to come. I liked the idea. In fact I bought a box the other day with the word “HOPE” on it and I placed it in the center of my fall decorations. I also like the idea of being grateful, all times of the year, each and every day. As one who battles depression, I’ve found meditating on what I'm thankful for can help when all my medicines and other preventative tools fail me some days.

So, with all those angles explained, you can see why I decided this year to try my hand at the Thanksgiving Alphabet Exercise or Challenge. Some letters are easy, and I couldn’t decide on just one, for others, I struggled to find anything at all simply because there are not as many words that start with say U, X or Z. So, you have to get creative or use a site like http://www.scrabblefinder.com/

And so, I challenge you to sit down, take some me-time, with pen and paper, and try to come up with your own Thanksgiving Alphabet. Putting mine below just by way of example, but I think you could sum it up by being thankful for family and my writing along with a few other things *winks*


Thanksgiving Alphabet 2014 - Kiki Howell

Amazon Top 100 Best Sellers, Hidden Salem and What Lies Within Us
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Compassion & Candles & Creativity
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Family & Food that Nourishes My Body
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Unity - Finding Regardless of Differences
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In accordance with the new FTC Guidelines for blogging and endorsements, Kiki Howell of An Author's Musings, would like to advise that in addition to purchasing my own books to review, I also receive books, and/or promotional materials, free of charge in return for an honest review, as do any guest reviewers.