Tag: writing

Jules Verne Knew the Future


—but he couldn’t have imagined what we’d do with it.

I’ve been reading Five Weeks in a Balloon, and there’s this line that stopped me in my tracks. Verne observes that Europe’s soil is becoming exhausted, and that America will one day face the same fate. Eventually, he predicts, Africa will become the agricultural center of the world.

It’s eerie how right he was.

Even in the 1800s, the land was already giving its warning. Generations of over-farming had stripped the soil bare. And he could see what was coming: extraction without regeneration, empire without restraint. He understood that the Earth doesn’t just keep giving. It keeps score.

But what he couldn’t have predicted was how far we’d go to override the land’s limits.

Instead of listening, we threw technology at the problem—fertilizers, monocrops, irrigation systems that drained rivers dry. We pushed yields higher and faster, with no thought to the long game. We engineered volume, not vitality. And now? We’re circling back. In the States, we’re just now starting to remove toxic chemicals from our food—finally catching up to what Europe understood decades ago. We talk about organic, sustainable, chemical-free like it’s cutting-edge… but we still don’t have a clue how to meet global demand without exhausting the Earth in the process.

Verne imagined Africa as a rising breadbasket. And today, yes—it holds some of the richest uncultivated land on the planet. But so much of that land is leased out to foreign entities, used for exports, or left vulnerable to climate shocks. We took promise and turned it into profit.

So here’s what I’m sitting with:
Can we still be innovative without being so destructive?

Can we imagine a future where technology partners with nature instead of overpowering it? Where food systems aren’t just efficient, but equitable? Where abundance doesn’t mean burnout?

And in the face of something so big, I ask the question I think most of us quietly carry: What can one person do?

Maybe we start by paying attention. By choosing differently, even in small ways. By asking better questions about what we eat, how it’s grown, and who gets to flourish. Maybe we start by imagining a future that doesn’t just feed the world—but heals it.

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Time Is a Funny Creature

Time is a strange thing. When I’m writing—really writing—I forget it exists. Hours pass in what feels like moments, and I resurface blinking, surprised the sun has moved. But at 3 a.m., cradling a squirmy puppy and begging her to please go back to sleep? Every minute drips like honey from a spoon. Thick. Slow. Unrelenting.

I’ve been thinking about how time doesn’t move the same for the heart as it does for the clock. When I’m in flow, time speeds up. When I’m in waiting, it slows to a crawl. And somehow, both feel precious.

Maybe time’s not meant to be measured in hours and minutes but in presence. In how deeply we’re living the moment we’re in—whether it’s a burst of creative energy or a quiet, tired vigil with a tiny creature learning the rhythm of the world.

Either way, I’m here. Pondering onward.

—Christine

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In My Dreams, I’m Always 25…

Lately, I’ve been pondering something strange but persistent: in my dreams, I’m never my current self.

Not in age. Not in weight. Not in health or hesitation.

I’m always… well, me—but the version of me that feels most like me. No back pain. No fatigue. No awareness of aging. I don’t second-guess what I’m capable of. I just am. Strong, moving, doing, becoming.

It made me wonder—do our brains hold onto some internal image of ourselves, some subconscious blueprint that gets locked in around age 25?

Science has some thoughts on that.

By our mid-20s, our prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, self-awareness, and our sense of identity—is fully developed. After that, the architecture is in place. The rest is refinement. That’s also the season of life when many people settle into who they believe they are and what they’re here to do.

Psychologists call it narrative identity—that invisible thread we use to stitch our life story together. And once we find that thread, we tend to hold onto it. Even if our bodies change. Even if time marches on.

So maybe, when we dream, we return to that version. The most whole version. The one that feels like freedom. Like purpose. Like us at full capacity.

And here’s the deeper layer I’ve been turning over:
What if that version is more than just a psychological default?

What if that’s our soul’s imprint?

What if that “ideal self” we return to in dreams—the one without limits or fear or fatigue—is a glimpse of who we really are, eternally? The version Heaven holds. Not in vanity, but in essence. Whole. Restored. As we were meant to be before time and gravity got their say.

Maybe the reason I always dream as my younger, healthier self isn’t just nostalgia.
Maybe it’s memory. Soul-memory. A whisper from eternity that says: This is still you.

Because even as our bodies age, something inside us never does. Something eternal remembers.

And when the world fades—when these earthly bodies fall away—maybe that’s the version of us that remains. The soul, shaped in love, refined by fire, and finally free.

So I ask you:
If you had to picture your truest self—the one that might walk into Heaven tomorrow—
What would she look like?

What age would she be?

Would she still carry worry? Or would she finally be light?

—

🌀 Just something I’m pondering. Maybe you are too.

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Bones Beneath the River of Life: On lineage & longing

Welcome to The Pondering Place.
This is where we wrestle with longing, memory, faith, and freedom — not as doctrines, but as living questions.
This piece is one of the first I wrote that felt like my soul had surfaced. I hope it meets you where you are.

I have this quiet ache that sits in the bones—not of pain, but of pull.

It shows up when I’m watching historical films or falling down rabbit holes on My Heritage or Ancestry. While sifting through old documents, brushing digital dust off names no one speaks anymore. Or while sitting on a rivers edge, or the cliff of a mountain. I feel a strange loneliness—for people I’ve never met. Grandmothers. Great-uncles. Someone named Ernst with a serious brow. They often feel close, like a whisper behind my shoulder.

But Jerry doesn’t feel it. He looks at the past and sees… the past. Interesting, maybe. Worth respecting, certainly. But it doesn’t call him forward the way it does me.

“It’s just names and dates, they do not determine who I am today.” he says—not unkindly.

That difference between us used to baffle me.

For years, I chalked it up to geography. My father and grandfather were from the old world, where family lines were both sacred and scattered. Jerry’s family has been in America since the 1700s. We could visit their graves if we had the mind to. Their stories are folded neatly into local history, their names etched into buildings and street signs. Maybe when you belong somewhere that long, you don’t have to long for anything.

But lately, I’m not so sure.

Maybe it’s not geography that creates that ache. Maybe it’s a kind of spiritual frequency that some of us are just tuned into—a genetic resonance, a soul-based curiosity, a divine breadcrumb trail. Maybe something in my DNA didn’t just pass down eye color or metabolism, but memory. Mystery. Mission.

Perhaps there’s one like me in every family—meant to keep the story alive.

Appointed to remember what others forgot.

Appointed to carry what others buried.

Maybe even appointed to heal deep wounds passed silently down through generations.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many cultures—Indigenous, Mexican, and throughout much of Asia—have never lost this connection. They honor ancestors not as ghosts, but as guides. Their names are spoken, their wisdom remembered, their presence invited to the table.

Sometimes I wonder if this longing I carry is really a longing to return to that—to a world where lineage was sacred, where the past wasn’t something to escape, but something to walk with.

There’s a kind of synchronicity in it all. A spiral of time. I think the past keeps sending signals, waiting for someone to answer back. And when I dive into the history of an ancestor—when I trace a name or uncover a story—I don’t feel alone.

I feel woven into something eternal.

And maybe that’s the truest inheritance of all.

✨ If something here spoke to you, you’re welcome to stay a while.
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What story in your family line still echoes in your thoughts, habits, or beliefs?

  • Was it silence?
  • Shame?
  • Perseverance?
  • Unspoken grief?
  • A legacy of strength no one ever named?

This week, ponder the turning of hearts—not just emotionally, but cognitively.

What belief did you inherit that’s asking to be healed? Pessimism? Racism? Hyper-independence? People-Pleasing?
What could you remember differently?

Ask God to help you see your lineage with His eyes.
Not with judgment, but with grace.
Not with nostalgia, but with purpose.
Not for the past, but for what it still carries forward.

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When God Speaks in the Silence

There’s a season for pouring into others, and a season for listening to what’s been poured into you.

For many years, I walked the path of a teacher—pouring energy, compassion, and hard-earned wisdom into the lives of others. It was a calling I never questioned, until the voice inside—the one I hadn’t heard in decades—began to rise again.

That voice wasn’t telling me to stop teaching.
It was inviting me to return to something I had buried long ago: writing.

The Play I Wrote… and the One I Didn’t

In grade school, I wrote a play. Just a small story in a child’s handwriting—dreamed up with the kind of boldness only a young imagination can hold. My teacher, bless her, didn’t just pat me on the head. She made the whole class perform it.

It should have been a joyful, affirming moment.
But instead, it silenced me.

My classmates laughed. They told me I didn’t write it. Called me a liar. Made fun of the words I had so lovingly put to the page. And in that strange way childhood wounds do, I absorbed it. I believed them. I stopped sharing my writing.

Not all silence is holy.
Some of it is survival.

I learned to hide the parts of me that felt too tender for ridicule. I learned to be “smart” instead of creative. To teach instead of tell. To pour out what was expected, not what was burning inside me. And yet, even in all those years of silence, my passion burned and God never stopped listening.

A New Season

Now, I find myself in a season I never quite expected—a season of freedom and time. The kind I used to dream of but never thought would be mine. I’m no longer bound by the rhythms of survival or the need to prove my worth. Instead, I find myself sitting with that younger version of me—the girl who wrote a play—and letting her speak again.

Writing now isn’t about proving anything.
It’s about reclaiming what was always mine.
And more importantly, what God never asked me to give up.

“See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” — Isaiah 43:19

Sometimes God speaks through silence—not to quiet us, but to draw us back to our truest voice. The one He planted long before others tried to reshape it.

So here I am. Writing. Reflecting. Creating The Pondering Place not as a platform, but as a space of restoration—for me and for anyone else who has ever been silenced, softened, or shut down.

If any part of your voice has been quieted—by fear, shame, or just the busyness of life—know that God still hears it. And He may be whispering: It’s time.

What voice did you silence in yourself to feel safe, accepted, or “reasonable”?

  • Was it creativity?
  • Boldness?
  • Emotion?
  • Curiosity?

This week, ask God to speak to you in the quiet.
Not with noise, but with clarity.
Not with answers, but with invitation.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 2:5

Write it down. Revisit it. And if you’re ready—let that voice speak again.

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