On books, sunrises and solitude
When "thoughts stir to give birth to color"
Three metal baskets stand side-by-side atop a storage cupboard in my “office.” Each holds a binder and a collection of books focused on one of three topics engaging my life these days. The baskets are an attempt to keep myself on track in what has turned out to be a very full season of learning, reading and writing. Before sitting down to write, I made two stacks of the books in those baskets, titles I am currently reading, have read or will be reading in these three categories. I took a photo of my stacks, thinking I just might impress you all.
But, why?
The books in the baskets represent what I have chosen to spend time on during this season of my life. They’re equipping me for endeavors that are calling to me: certification as a Spiritual Director, leading others well, writing my first novel. Great books, every one of them, and they are bringing about change and growth in my life. But they are just tools. It’s what I do with the knowledge and skills gained that really matters. Your focus and the tools you are using might be very different.1
In addition to digesting the “required reading” in my three baskets, I’m revisiting Parker J. Palmer’s book “On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old” 2. It’s the second or third time for me and I’m finding his words carry even more weight when held in the light of my endeavors. Parker’s words serve as a plumb line for how I digest all the words I’m reading (and writing). This paragraph grabbed my attention recently:
“When we’re young and wholly engaged with the external world, we may manage to feel ‘alive’ for a while without an inner life. But when we experience diminishments and defeats — the kind that can come at any age and are inevitable when we get old — we run the risk of feeling dead before our time if we lack inner resources. What do I mean by an ‘inner life’? I mean a largely silent, solitary process of reflection that helps us reclaim the ‘ground of our being’ and root ourselves in something larger and truer than our own egos.” ~ Parker J. Palmer
In the most practical sense, my three-basket discipline has provided guard rails for how many endeavors I choose to juggle at one time. I know myself and I’m prone to ping from one area of interest to another, never landing long enough to soak up the good that’s grabbed my attention. Like a butterfly flitting from plant to plant, I take a sip of the nectar of “shiny” topics then move on. What suffers when I do this isn’t just the capacity to go deep on a chosen topic. It’s also the space for reflection and contemplation and the impact the pursuit has on my life.
Guard rails can keep me on track, but they also root me in “something truer and larger” than my own ego. And they give me time to think! Intentionally focusing on what I’ve committed to pursue is expanding my inner life in ways I couldn’t have imagined just a year ago.
Every good and worthwhile choice we make about how to spend this one life will likely require letting go of something else. I’ve purposely carved out time for a “solitary process of reflection” this spring by engaging in two weekends of silent retreat. I’ve also tried to limit time on social media and TV news. I don’t read as much fiction as I’d like, but summer is coming and that stack is growing, too (note the review below). The only thing I’ve been writing lately, outside of taking notes and journaling, is the novel — hence my lack of engagement here recently. And, I’ve chosen to pass on a few social opportunities that I’d normally jump at. Aside from time with our family, I’ve been laying low.
And that photo of two stacks of books I am reading? It’s just for me, to remind myself where I’ve been and where I’m going.
I was enamored recently by sunrise casting a warm glow across our east-facing dining room. I sat in awe for a minute before attempting to capture it with a photo on my phone. Though not nearly so striking as the three-dimensional, in-the-moment play of sunlight streaming through the window, the image makes me happy. It was taken on an early spring morning after reading a poem in John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessing 3. This Irish poet’s words resonated with the scene before me:
Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
Is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin to brighten the shore of dawn.
The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to color.
“Thoughts stir to give birth to color”— occasionally a rosy dawning is exactly what is needed to push away any early morning laments that threaten to cloud the day. Thank you, Mr. O’Donohue.
Summer is prime time for reading fiction
I’m making room in my book stacks for some fiction titles and thought I’d share a few with you. I’d love to know what you’re reading, so pass on your recommendations.
I started reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles last fall but set it aside once my leadership and spiritual direction courses began and time for free-reading was at a premium. I am happily back in the company of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov and thoroughly enjoying it. This New York Times bestseller is now a mini-series starring Ewan MacGregor. He portrays a Russian aristocrat spared from death and placed on house arrest while the Bolshevik Revolution plays out before him. I will finish the book before watching the mini-series and expect that it will not measure up to the novel, because film adaptations rarely do. Imagining Russia in the 1920s has been a delightful contrast to portraying the Midwestern United States in the same time period, when a portion of my novel takes place. Vastly different culturally, yet quite similar morally, we’ll call this book “research.”
Next up will be The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. I am a huge fan of Kidd and loved her best seller The Secret Life of Bees (as well as the film). I read her controversial novel The Book of Longing a few years ago, which led me to pick up The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (first published in 1996). Reading this spiritual memoir has helped me understand her fiction.
I mentioned above that I took two spiritual retreats this spring. Both were at The Hermitage near Three Rivers, Michigan. I’ve written about past retreats at this beautiful site in the rolling hills of southwest Michigan (The Power of Sacred Spaces) and these two periods of silence and solitude were just as impactful. The triptych above features images captured in a stone chapel set in a glen at The Hermitage. I returned to it several times for a period of silence and solitude. I highly recommend searching out such a space for reflection and contemplation.
About that novel….
In one week, 15 pages of my little novel (and the author) will be at Scriptoria Writers’ Workshop, “a collaboration between three Christian traditions with Aquinas College, Calvin University, and Cornerstone University professors.” My work will be critiqued by fellow authors under the guidance of our patient and gifted instructor, Canadian author and former professor Hugh Cook. A report will be forthcoming!
If you’re curious to know some of the titles, message me and I’ll be happy to share.
Parker Palmer is a Quaker teacher, author, podcaster and speaker who brings a deeply thoughtful perspective to every book he writes. This one is his 10th.