Category Archives: Good Reads

Sweater Weather

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Good Reads, Home Restoration, In the Garden, Life at Home, Prayer

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“Prayer demands that we act, and that–having acted in accordance with our leading in prayer–we bear the consequences of our acts, even when we cannot foresee all that they are to cost.”         — Douglas V. Steere, Dimensions of Prayer, p. 84
 
 
IMG_0581AT HOME, CURRENTLY READING: “The Paying Guests,” by Sarah Waters
 

After all the go-go goings defining this long season of Pentecost, I am relishing moments of holy leisure today, the guilt-free sort that arrive on wings of winter chill.

It’s no small miracle the difference a few days can make to one’s priorities and state of mind. Why all autumn long, prior to knowing that there was such a thing as an “ARCTIC BLAST” (“AB”), I’ve been cocooned in an Indian Summer insouciance, preparing the garden for future summers rather than getting ready for the certain reality of a winter that — let’s face it — could have happened anytime.

I put off decision-making on how best to winterize our fountain — whether to store it or keep it operating with a heater — in favor of reworking and expanding large sections of the garden. Rather than taking time to ensure I had paper tape to protect trees most susceptible to sun scald, I instead focused on editing plant material — adding, and relocating plants within my garden… passing along other plants that needed more spacious digs.

So to read how AB ended up catching me off guard could surprise no one… but maybe myself. The day after AB arrived, the fountain was still operating…without its needed heater.  Tree trunks of those normally wrapped were still bare.  And the most prolific tomato plant I’ve ever been privileged to nurture was loaded with hundreds of little green tomatoes… just waiting for someone to take note… and pick, pick, pick.

The gardener shapes the garden and vice versa, but both are shaped by seasonal changes.  Take this winter freeze, for instance.  Before this, I’d never considered how effective winter can be at making things happen.  When a freeze means do or die, it’s time to do.  Which in my garden meant that the fountain heater finally got installed.  The trees got taped.  And a few hours before temperatures dived below thirty-two degrees, my husband and I picked too-many-to-count little green tomatoes, fifty of which have already ripened.

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Winter makes things happen in other ways, too, though often, in less perceptible ways.  In an out of the garden, new growth occurs below the surface of life;  as roots develop for spring growth within the cold, dark soil, something analogous goes on in the life of this gardener, too, as I’m snuggled into some warm and light-infused spot of my lovely home. Like no other season of the year, winter invites me to settle in and get still, it offers me creative space to catch my breath, to rest my tired body and recharge my spirit, to ponder life and my response to life, often with the aid of a good novel or fine film in front of me.

It also gives me time to ponder future projects I may one day undertake.  Last January, my bathroom remodel was the stuff of wintertime day dreams.  I devoted time to study of the space. I took measurements. I made lists of features that I’d like to have in my new bathroom. I considered the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of many remodeled bathrooms that appealed to me. I probably overdosed on remodeled bathrooms designed by Sarah Richardson.  But only after pondering all of my wishes and restraints for a very long time did I begin to sketch out possible floor plans.  It took weeks to come up with one I was ready to develop further, to invest time needed to selecting materials and fixtures. Marble tile for the floor.  Ceramic for the tile wainscoting.  Shimmery glass mosaics for the upper half of the shower.  Calcutta Gold Quartzite for the countertop.  A large vessel tub.  Pendant lights.

Buy why bother with words when I can show you the ‘before’ and ‘after’ so easily with photos?

Before.

IMG_1680And after.

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 And a few more, for good measure.

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  16Most see it as an amazing transformation.  But then, how could it be otherwise? It’s always seems to be a step in the right direction wherever light illumines space and whenever narrow views grow to be more opened.  What’s true for room design holds true for life in the garden and, most importantly, the life of this gardener, too.

Though, sometimes, I do wonder at all the changes that have taken place within me over the span of my adult life. Changes in attitude. Perspective. Philosophy. Changes that have occurred in my spiritual life and in religious affiliation.  My choice in films and novels. My preference in how I furnish my home and dress myself.  My taste in food.  How I once loved eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger…

Why, even the way I perceive myself has changed.  Six years ago, I would never have considered calling myself a gardener, though I did garden a fair amount. So who can say how and when it happened,… I only know that today, I refer to myself as a gardener.  And that life as a gardener shapes my view of the world.

These inward personal changes cannot be documented with the ease of ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos, though they live within me nevertheless…which reminds me that “To pray is to change.”  Like all the other changes that have slowly shaped my present identity, I cannot pinpoint where I first read…and absorbed…these words.  I only know that the saying feels true to my experience.

I pray.

I act.

My actions shape my prayers and my prayers, in turn, shape my actions… until the two blur to become one… and my prayer becomes my action.

In other words, as I often like to say, my life is my prayer.  But unlike Douglas V. Steer, I do not know whether I believe that my prayer… or my life… can really tip the cosmic balance (p. 69 of Dimensions of Prayer) of what will occur without either my prayers or my life.

But who can say what impact our words or deeds might have on the lives of others?

Who can say whether or not that maybe we all tip the balance a little every day?

I only know that, today, I’ve settled into sweater weather.   And that at certain times in my life, I have felt the warmth of prayers spoken on my behalf as much as I do the warmth of this coral-colored, cotton sweater that, today, covers my arms and heart.

Sweater weather!  How grateful I am to be within your seasonal embrace.

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Vacationing with Proust

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home

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IMG_0575So… I’ve begun reading Proust.

More than once, I’ve begun Swann’s Way.

I can’t say how many times I’ve picked it up off my nightstand… only to put it back down two paragraphs later. I tell myself I’m done with it, that the time isn’t ripe for me to read this  masterpiece; but then, resolve weakens.

So I pick at it.  And it picks back.

Between all that picking, sometimes I flip pages back and forth to ferret out meaning, while wondering where Monsieur Proust is taking me.  I’ve no answers.  Only questions.  Easy ones, like what brings people to Proust if he’s such a hard read?  What causes readers to persist and not give up hopes of reading his work?  Is there any plot?  If so, has it begun… and I missed it?

With no small relief, I’m able to report my reading experience imperfectly normal, if one ignores all my vacation time away, which amounts to something like four days out of every seven.  I know this because, when on vacation from Proust, I take off on the internet to visit other readers who’ve confessed their many failed attempts in reading this four thousand word page story.

One of my favorite retreats, which I’ve visited over and over since beginning the novel last month, is a blog piece addressed to a reading group connected with The Guardian.  Authored by Sam Jordison, the entire post is wonderful; the blogger’s insights, as well as testimonies of other readers, has assuaged my guilt and inspired me to soldier on in spite of the questions littering Swann’s Way.  A short excerpt follows:

Of course, describing Proust in terms of plot alone does no justice to the reflections, counter-reflections, digressions and musings that form so much of the immersive pleasure he offers. But it does explain why so many readers feel themselves going under so quickly. Even those who find his writing lovely struggle to progress, as Reading Group AndrewLesk puts it,

‘I have started this book four times. Once got to page 200. Why did I stop? Time, ironically. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve read. Looking forward to getting through it all now that the Club is onto it.’

He wasn’t the only one to struggle.  JuliaC42 wrote:

‘I started reading it once (the Moncrieff) but it took me so long to read the first chapter that I gave up. It is now doing a good job of supporting my clock radio at the correct height.’

So what brings me back?  Why do I continue to pick up Proust?  I wish I knew.   But what I know instead is that is has nothing to do with checking off bucket lists or acquiring bragging rights for traversing the work’s heights “because it was there.”

Perhaps Proust’s appeal lies in passages, like the one below from page 116 (The Modern Library Classics version, translated by Moncrieff, Kilmartin and Enright) as well as others that allude to the way reading a book can help us better read everyday life… to know reality rather than the perceptions of reality that too often blind us to truth.

Next to this central belief which, while I was reading, would be constantly reaching out from my inner self to the outer world, toward the discovery of truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I was taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime.  These were the events taking place in the book I was reading.

By excerpting this, I’ve killed its passion, haven’t I?  So it goes with me and Proust and why I turn so often to the world-wide web for comfort.

If my internet interludes tell me anything, it’s that there are many ways to take Proust.  Some read to get the gist of his thoughts; others consume his prose in small doses, like poetry.  That neither approach has worked for me, nor that I’ve yet stumbled upon some middle way, may explain why I’m out of step with my own on-line reading group since I’ve only half-finished with Part One.  And why I’m planning to take Proust with me on vacation next week… if not to catch up, or to catch on, then to at least allow Proust to catch some Caribbean sunshine…before we begin again.

Winter Mulling

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home, Soul Care

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IMG_0481“”It’s not good to complain about your flock,” she advised.  “A flock is nothing but the put-together of all your past choices.””

— Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

 

It happens rarely, but sometimes, words I’ve read from a novel will linger within me.  To be sure, it is never the exact line of prose that I remember, the one rendered so beautifully by the author.  Instead, it’s something all together better since the author’s lines point to a living truth.

It happens something like this:  I’m going along reading, reading, reading, really involved in the story, words flying and zooming past my eyes before I realize, a few sentences too late, that I’ve passed an important turn or perhaps a yellow blinking light that was cautioning me to slow down and take note.  I have no choice but to pull over and take myself out of the story.  I know from experience that I cannot proceed without circling back up the page to reread the unmarked but blinking passage.  I return long enough to pause over it.  Not too.   But long enough that some bit of truth flies off the page to live within me.

Usually, the words, like those above written by Barbara Kingsolver, seem too small to fuss over.  I don’t know what deeper meaning, if any, they are suppose to possess.  Or what I am to make or do with them.  But two days ago, more than a week after finishing Flight Behavior, I saw that if I substituted the word ‘flock’ for ‘life,’ how the meaning of Kingsolver’s two lines came close to thoughts I’ve been mulling over since …. well, whenever I last wrote a post in this blog.

IMG_0485I’ve been reading more than mulling here of late.  Lots and lots of good books —  not good enough to keep but good enough to donate to the local library for the good of a larger reading circle.  Or so I thought, until today’s lunch, when I decided I’d been too hasty or perhaps moving on autopilot, when it came to my most recently stacked book, Amor Towles novel, Rules of Civility.

Six chapters into my latest read — E.L Doctorow’s award-winning Ragtime — I kept on thinking about Towels novel.  Not the story, as good as it was, but two blinking passages I decided important enough to turn around for, to pick up, like hitchhikers off the side of the road.

The first passage reminds me never to give up on my dreams… and really, some things in life are too good not to share…

“You look back with the benefit of age upon the dreams of most children and what makes them seem so endearing is their unattainability–this one wanted to be a pirate, this one a princess, this one president.  But from the way Tinker talked you got the sense that his starry-eyed dreams were still within his reach; maybe closer than ever.” (p. 300)

The second speaks around the same truth I tripped over in Kingsolver’s two simple lines.  But since the passage is followed by a one sentence paragraph that reads — “Maybe that sounds bleaker than I intended — I’ll stop here.  The second slice is good  enough to keep for another day.  My memory, unfortunately, is not.  So note to self:  the second can be found hiding on page 323.