Author: harmamae
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Freedom to Fail
An updated version of this post has been published at the Reformed Perspective magazine! It’s been a long time since I shared a “Quotables” post. But I came across a quote this week that reminded me of another quotable I wrote on years ago, about failure. That old post was about the incisive power of…
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Ending in a City – From Garden to City, Part 2
This post was originally on my second blog, Reading the Christian Classics. All posts from that blog have now been migrated here, so all my writing is in one place. You can read Part 1, about the garden, here. Ending in a City Have you ever heard the saying, “the Bible begins in a garden but…
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On Doing Things that Scare You
“Just because something scares me, doesn’t mean I won’t do it,” I told a friend of mine the other day, as a way of explaining myself—explaining why I might push back against an idea and make it look objectively from an outside perspective like I don’t want to do it—and yet I do it anyway.…
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We’ve Got to Get Back to the Garden? – From Garden to City, Part 1
This post was originally on my second blog, Reading the Christian Classics. All posts from that blog have now been migrated here, so all my writing is in one place. We’ve Got to Get Back to the Garden? What does it mean to go “back to the garden”? “Back to the garden” evokes this sense of…
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Another Bible Study Method!
This post was originally on my second blog, Reading the Christian Classics. All posts from that blog have now been migrated here, so all my writing is in one place. Another Bible Study Method How do we usually teach the Bible? When teaching children, we tend to either tell them biblical stories, or give them…
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My Frustrations Upon Rereading Sense and Sensibility
I was rereading Sense and Sensibility the other day, and suddenly realized it’s not my favourite Jane Austen novel. Any Jane Austen novel is a novel of the highest quality, so to say “not my favourite Austen novel” still means I love this book. But in the past I’ve found I keep forgetting to mention…
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Looking Back on 2021: Author Update from Harma-Mae Smit
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, it’s not exactly true, but if there’s something you’re passionate about and you can channel your creativity towards that, then you are really making the most of your time. It’s work, yes, but you also get to explore what you love.…
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Why Tour Paris? Reason No. 7: Take in the View from the Sacré-Cœur
Where can you get a lovely view of Paris? From the Eiffel Tower, is one obvious answer (another landmark you can climb is the Arc de Triomphe). But there is another viewpoint that you do not have to pay to go up, where you can sit and enjoy for as long as you wish (perhaps…
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Why Tour Paris? Reason No. 6: Get Lost in the Louvre
In my novella, Paris in Clichés, the characters “race from the Winged Victory to Venus de Milo to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, with barely half a glance at everything in between.” This is the only glimpse they have of the famous Louvre Museum, and it’s very similar to what many tourists see when…
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Why Tour Paris? Reason No. 5: Macarons at Ladurée on the Champs-Elysées
One image that Paris conjures up is definitely a narrow stacked pyramid of puffy, double-decker macarons in a rainbow of pastel shades: rose, lavender, mint green, cream, lemon yellow. Or these very same macarons nestled tightly in silver-embossed boxes. Why are macarons so deeply connected to Paris? You might have guessed it–this version of the…
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