Tags
…listening to:
(Totally in love with the Mumford & Sons sound of his voice!)
…reading:
(Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott)
…believing tonight:
Source: forevernevernalways1.blogspot.com via Krista on Pinterest
16 Thursday Aug 2012
Tags
…listening to:
(Totally in love with the Mumford & Sons sound of his voice!)
…reading:
(Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott)
…believing tonight:
Source: forevernevernalways1.blogspot.com via Krista on Pinterest
29 Friday Jun 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense
inTags
While driving up to Maine for our anniversary getaway last month, my husband asked if there was anything I especially wanted to do while we were on vacation. My reply? “Find a used bookstore!” And so we did.
When we walked through the door, the thrill of book-chasing filled me. Bookcases filled the walls from floor to ceiling, towering tall over our heads. My nostrils tingled with the aroma of books: paper, dust and print. Stacks of books were on the floor, in boxes and on tables. Bindings of every color and books of every shape, paperback and hardcover beckoned me to crane my neck and read their titles.
It reminded me of a quote from Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart:
The books in Mo and Meggie’s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There where books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fell over them.
Books feel like home. I think I could find a corner in nearly any bookstore and find a book-world to lose myself in. And this time, that corner was the biographies, surprising enough since literature and children’s fiction tend to be the homiest spot for me. It was a surprise for myself, quite honestly. I hadn’t had much luck in the children’s section – a smaller selection there than I’d hoped – and I always feel overwhelmed by shelves of adult fiction, as it is much more of a challenge to find treasures there. My head dizzy with titles and author names that I didn’t like or even recognize, I moved on.
And as I walked past the shelves of biographies, my neck craned upward and angled to read spines, I saw her name.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
I read her first diary, Bring Me a Unicorn, a few months ago and honestly wasn’t sure if I loved it enough to warrant moving on to the four other books in her collection of journals and letters. Still, I found a stool to perch myself on and, with the extra 12 inches of height it afforded me, pulled the two journals out from between a biography about her and her book North to the Orient.
The third and fourth journals, entirely out of sequence in the quintet, but at $4.00 and $12.00 respectively, how could I resist such bargains when I knew that they go for over $20.00 each on Amazon.com? I paged through them and read snippets. Just as brilliant with prose as with Bring Me a Unicorn, plus the last book covered the start of WWII, which sounded immensely intriguing.
I tucked them under my arm and hopped off my perch. They were coming home with me, I was determined. And so they did, along with a nice shiny treasury of Calvin & Hobbes (totally classic and essential for my husband to be introduced to). And just as I felt entirely at home in that bookshop, I think my new book friends feel just as home sitting on my bookcase here at home – or in my hands as they have been often for the last month.
And as May turned out to be the month of reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh, thoughts on Locked Rooms and Open Doors and War Without and Within will come as soon I have them organized into something readable!
19 Tuesday Jun 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense, Life as a Fire-wife, Making Things, Pen on Paper
inThere are always far too many good books to read and far too little time in which to read them. And that means, you always have at least three or four books sitting in your ‘current reads’ stack. What am I reading right now?
Grace for the Good Girl – Emily Freeman
Blackout – Connie Willis
Rumors of Water – L.L. Barkat
Locked Rooms and Open Doors: The Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Code Name Verity – Elizabeth Wein
I Love a Fire Fighter – Ellen Kirschman
What’s in your stack of current reads?
17 Sunday Jun 2012
Posted Adventures, Bookish Nonsense, Family, Making Things, Pen on Paper
inTags
Strawberries taste like summer, I think, dropping another ripe berry into my cardboard flat. My younger sister’s lips are stained pink from taste-testing the fruit of her labors. The berries are plump and ruby ripe, perfect from a rainy week followed by days of sunshine.
The sun is hot on my back and I hope I don’t get a sunburn. Still, I can already smell jam cooking on the stove and taste fresh strawberries with shortcake and cream.
It’s within moments like these that I feel most content and right with the world. The dirt beneath my feet solid and comforting, the promise of sweetness for a winter to come. I feel safe, right and well with the world; not insecure in myself (for the moment, at least) and not striving within to compete and compare with others.
The moment just feels right.
It’s like Rich Mullins says in his book The World as I remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin…
Not often, but every once in a while you have that perfect kind of moment when you put everything into a task and find you have enough, and you feel that, even if you bungle the job, there is little at stake. You sink your teeth into something, put your heart into it, act deliberately, by choice–not by coercion of immediate necessity. You mean what you do as if there is no meaning at all in anything else–you do it for the joy of doing it, not just to get it done. You shoot from the hip, swing from your shoulders and feel that exhilarating grace and balance of having found your center, or having centered yourself.
…It is in those moments that we find some sense of who we are. Regardless of how grand or common the event of the moment is, in it we see ourselves at our absolute best–focused, posed and pure–no compromise, no ulterior motives, no self-deception or pretense. We see what we are like when we have no point to prove or score, no bills to fit, no scrutinizing to endure…
Between the stress of my workplace, a full life, a never-ending to-do list, plus a harsh inner critic, moments like this are uncommon for me. As a result, they are all the more sweeter and this strawberry morning moment…tastes very sweet indeed.
11 Monday Jun 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense, Pen on Paper
inIt’s late on a work night and I suddenly have the urge to go digging through boxes in search of my old, old journals. I know I would undoubtedly spend more time wincing over them than not (as I will one day over my current journal), but I still want to find them and maybe find an old – yet far younger – version of myself pressed between two dates and two pages of line paper.
I wonder if my younger self would like the me of today. I have a feeling she wouldn’t approve of me entirely. I find more and more shades of grey these days. It’s so much more of a challenge than when it used to be black and white and I know when babies arrive one day, it will be even more confusing, grey and I only hope I don’t flounder. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel ‘grown up’ and capable.
Is this something all adults realize one day, that they are just figuring things out as they go along and little do the children around them realize it? Are we all faking it to some extent? Pretending we’ve got it all together when we are freaked out just a little inside that we’re not going to pull it off in the end?
04 Monday Jun 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense
inTags
I thought of Barbara Cooney’s book Miss Rumphius last week when we found the ruins of an old house during a walk. It’s one of the most delightful picture books ever; the illustrations are beautiful and the story, inspiring.
Travel the world. Live by the sea. And make the world a beautiful place. Those are the aspirations of Alice Rumphius. And does exactly that: she travels and eventually settles down in Maine, in a house by the sea.
All that is left is to add beauty to the world, but how?
She plants lupines. She scatters seeds here, there and everywhere.
And the seeds sprout. Lupines grow in patches by the roads, by the schoolhouse, in hollows, on hills.
And they make the world a beautiful place indeed.
How will I bring beauty to the world? How will you?
30 Wednesday May 2012
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If you could sum up this small, sweet collection of stories, you’ll find yourself completing the title with the word LOVE. Love is the thread that runs through every person’s story as they retell it to the Story Corps and it lands off the page into your lap when you read it.
Each story is different, delightful and will make you alternate between smiling and crying. I smiled and laughed over a couple who fell for each other after seeing each other a toll booth every morning. And tucked tid-bits away from a couple who loved each other for 53 years, two months and five days. I cried my eyes out over the remembrance from the wife of an office worker who never made it out of the twin towers on September 11, 2001.
A sweet book that reminds me again: we all have stories, we all are stories. And they should never be lost. Journal for yourself, for your spouse and for your children. Write them letters. Stories. Write down the stories you hear from your relatives. Don’t let them be lost.
16 Monday Apr 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense, Pen on Paper
inAnne Morrow Lindbergh had a knack for writing a journal that just bubbles over with vivid beauty. She excels in descriptive writing and makes you feel every moment with all senses.
It can feel like a taste of spring on a winter’s day, the breeze warm on your cheek as you read it. And it can also make you feel like a slouch when it comes to your own journals because there are no breezes or spring flavors awoken on your tongue when you re-read it. (Surely I’m not the only one who winces when she re-reads her journals?!)
Still, in spite of a tinge of jealousy, I did enjoy a glimpse into the life of the woman who married Lucky Lindy, including the period of their life when they first met and became engaged. It’s fascinating to see him through her eyes and if it weren’t for the fact that I sincerely dislike his political persuasion, I’d be very intrigued to do more reading up on him
and his story. Instead, I find myself intrigued more by Anne and drawn to re-reading her small book, Gifts from the Sea, wanting to taste more of her words and experience a bit of her life through her writings.
And – I find myself journaling again, even if my notes on life will never been as good or as widely read as hers. Perhaps if I make more of a conscious effort to look at life with an eye for stories, for words and retelling, I might be somewhere on the way to writing like that.
13 Friday Apr 2012
Posted Bookish Nonsense, Pen on Paper
inSynopsis: Eighteen year old orphan Judy is given the chance of a life-time. Intrigued by her smart-alecky essay poking fun at the orphanage’s ‘blue Monday’ trustees visits, an anonymous trustee decides to give her the chance at a college education for free. Well, with one stipulation: she must write him a letter once a month informing him of her progress in studies during all 4 years of studying, while he remains hidden behind the anonymity of his lawyer. And thus begins the strange relationship between young Judy and her anonymous benefactor.
I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years, makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it’s a very comfortable sensation. I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination has very little to work upon. There are just three things that I know:
I. You are tall.
II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.
I suppose I might call you dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that’s sort of insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that’s insulting to you, as though money were the only important thing about you. Besides, being rich is such an external quality. Maybe you won’t stay rich all your life; lots of very clever men get smashed up in Wall Street. But at the least you will stay tall all your life! So I’ve decided to call you Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. I hope you won’t mind. It’s just a private pet name – we won’t tell Mrs. Lippett…
I love Judy’s voice and personality, her quirky sense of humor and plucky spirit. And her voice as a writer: it shines through all four years of college and letters to her ‘Daddy-Long-Legs.” It’s a book that makes me smile every time I re-read it because it’s just such a happy-cheery-adorable little book. The letter-story-telling is pulled off by Jean Webster with delightful ease, inspiring me to put even more thought into my letter-writing, as limited as it might be these days. And the illustrations, absolutely adorable, hilarious and the perfect touch for a book written in such a style.
And one last quote, from our heroine:
I think I might copy that for a reminder on my refrigerator. Time to meet the petty hazards of life with a smile!
28 Tuesday Feb 2012
There’s more that rises in the morning
Than the sun
And more that shines in the night
Than just the moon
It’s more than just this fire here
That keeps me warm
In a shelter that is larger
Than this room
And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things
So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can’t let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home…
– Rich Mullins
Sometimes, life surprises me with its beauty. Days go by and I don’t notice the sky as much. I used to see the leaves on that tree across from my office and admire them every day, the green against vivid blue. How long has it been since I stopped looking up?
One day, I look up.
And I am surprised, once again, by that sudden and intense ache in my chest. I’m not so much surprised by the beauty, but rather by the ache. It’s a sudden rush of joy, yet homesickness, too, combined into a most bittersweet of flavors.
Beauty does that to me, when I truly notice it. I’ve written about it before. I find myself smitten and homesick, nostalgic for things I’m not sure I’ve ever seen or known. “Do I dream of heaven?” I ask.
I think I do.
Recently, while reading Things Unseen by Mark Buchanan, I found myself once again pondering my homesickness and wondering if these pangs are longings for a place I cannot see or experience yet. A heavenly Jerusalem.
“When God wants to carry a point with his children,” Emerson said, “He plants his argument into the instincts.” Our deepest instinct is heaven. Heaven is the ache in our bones, the splinter in our heart. Like the whisper of faraway waves we hear crashing in the whorls of a conch shell, the music of heaven echoes, faint, elusive, haunting, beneath and within our daily routines.
There you are, standing at a window, watching oak leaves flutter down from dark boughs, and without warning your whole body fills with a longing for something you can’t name, something you’ve lost but never had, that you’re nostalgic for yet don’t remember. You sense a joy so huge it breaks you, a sorrow so deep it cleanses.
Or in line at a store one day, you turn and look at a child who doesn’t notice you. The skin on her face curves down flushed and smooth along her cheekbones and creases into delicate folds at her eyes. There is a wild hope in those eyes, and her beauty pierces you in a way you don’t understand.
Or you listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and somehow it is both laughter and mourning, spring and winter, homecoming and exile. It makes you feel supple and playful and young and yet old, with brittle bones and trembling hands. And you wonder, How can this be?
This is how: You want to go home. The instinct for heaven is just that: homesickness, ancient as night, urgent as daybreak. All your longings—for the place you grew up, for the taste of raspberry tarts that your mother once pulled hot from the oven, for that bend in the river where your father took fishing as a child, where the water was dark and swirling and the caddis flies hovered in the deep shade—all these longings are a homesickness, a wanting in full what all these things only hint at, only prick you with. These are the things seen that conjure in our emotions the Things Unseen. “He has set eternity in the hearts of men,” the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (3:11).
I think I’m finally beginning to understand it.
Yes, I dream of heaven. I’m homesick, homesick for a place I’ve never known. My loyalties aren’t to this earth, but to a kingdom to come. I love this world, this shadow kingdom, but it’s a love that makes me ache, which is just as it should be.
And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things
I want to always notice the beauty and always ache with the hope of what is to come someday, someday, one day when all things are new and all is well with the world, the whole, whole world.