Beryl Singleton Bissell

I've been so busy working on finishing the sequel to The Scent of God, and connecting with the publisher on my soon to be released A View of the Lake, that I've neglected this blog which, if properly utilized provides a great tool for keeping me focused and on track. We've been enjoying a several months hiatus in Florida with its attendant delights -- beach, pool, parks, bikes, nearby access to everything from food to movies (I mention the latter two items because on the North Shore of Lake Superior "nearby" access does not exist). Visits from friends and family seeking to escape the blustery brutal winter that's prevailed elsewhere across the nation provided yet another excuse to neglect my blogging here and elsewhere. Nevertheless, I've almost finished the second (well actually 4th) draft of Looking for Francesca with its attendant letting of blood, tears, and laughter. Because the manuscript has grown unwieldy with stories, each of which to my eyes is important, I've applied for a Arts Board Grant for editorial critique by a professional with a sharp eye and merciless hand.  Read More 

Lake Superior’s North Shore is a craggy, rugged land with only six inches of topsoil on some of the oldest rock exposed rock on earth. Over 90 % of the land is state and national forest. Two thousand square miles of land with an average population according to the latest census of 3.6 persons per mile. Towns are small. The town where I live boasts fewer than 200 residents. It’s quiet up here, the predominant sound that of waves crashing against ledge rock, and the peregrine falcons and ring-billed gulls cruising above. It’s a place where you’d better love the out-of-doors because there is little indoor activity to distract you. TV reception is inaccessible unless you have satellite and that’s expensive. Night life focuses primarily on lodges and taverns, when they’re open, the occasional community theater production or visiting musical group. Those who don’t live here wonder what we do with ourselves. There’s little industry save tourism. Mostly the area caters to tourists, artists, people wanting to escape city life. In warm weather we hike, pick berries, watch birds, canoe the boundary waters and challenge Lake Superior in kayaks. The lake is too cold for swimming. In winter we hunt, snow shoe, ski, run sled dogs, watch the night sky. Deer, wolves, bear and an occasional moose wander our woods. It’s a perfect place for a monastery, here where God’s bounty is so clearly visible. Contemplative living should flow naturally in such a place, one would think, yet perfect places do not guarantee perfect lives. Always we lug ourselves around, not seeing clearly, not listening closely, always dependent on God’s love to rekindle the fires of yearning within us. Advent approaches, reminding us that the Incarnation was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love for us. In a beautiful meditation on Advent, Sallie Latkovich CSJ writes that in Advent we contemplate the three ways of Christ’s coming: in history, in our daily lives, and in the second coming. “I’ve been thinking that we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We need not wait for God. God is always present, always with us . . . this Advent I’ve come to see that it’s GOD who waits for us . . . [God who] waits for us to notice the myriad ways in which God is with us, always.”  Read More 

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of my 24-year old daughter Francesca's death. Yesterday was a beautiful day. The sun was bright, the air clear, the weather crisp. My husband Bill and I hiked to the top of Lookout Mountain where we ate a picnic lunch. Back home, I walked our wild labyrinth, then sat on the big cedar swing where she and I sat the last time I saw her. The swing is next to the place where we buried her ashes -- a gorgeous spot on the other side of our footbridge and overlooking Lake Superior. Yesterday was a good day, but the day before, the ninth anniversary of the day she was supposed to have arrived home, was harder. The same weightiness that troubled me that day bound me in an inner darkness. I haven't felt that dullness for years and was surprised at its reappearance. All one can do in such instances is enter into the silence. Read More 

The time spent in my writing shed has yielded fruit. I've finished the final draft of A View From the Lake which will be published next May by Port Cities Inc. And, after a cursory rereading of my first three drafts of The Girl Behind the Mask, the sequel to The Scent of God, I am moving with more certain steps across that rocky terrain. With thousands of pages of journal entries to guide this journey back into the events, decisions, doubts, and regrets that would eventually lead to my daughter's violent unresolved death, I have the data. Now comes the hard part: getting to the story beneath the story where insight lies and healing takes place. Read More 

My friends and neighbors think I've moved. When they see me they ask how long I'll be visiting. I tell them I've been here all along. I have moved, in a way . . . to my writing shed where I write -- not emails or blogs or twitters but books and articles. I work in the writing shed because it has no internet or telephone to distract me. A desk, computer, several shelves of books, and piles of research materials comprise its furnishings. My writing shed sits next to the attached garage, maybe 50 feet from the house. I head there after my morning rituals (stretch, meditate, read) and sometimes emerge for lunch, or to take a hike to air my brain cells. Rarely to visit. I'm heading back there now to finish the final edits on my next book: A View of the Lake: Living the Dream. Filled with laughter and learning and conflict, A View of the Lake should interest anyone who dreams of moving to a gorgeous locale and wonders what such a move entails and how it will impact their lives. Meanwhile, I keep working on the sequel to The Scent of God: The Girl Behind the Mask a journey to understand and forgive the decisions that led to my daughter's violent and unresolved death at the age of 24. To uncover, after her death, the beautiful tormented daughter I never really knew.  Read More