On, In, and Around Mondays: Waiting for Anne O'Sullivan

Closed.

The house, yellow with green shutters. The porch, in sun and shadow. The spirit of Emily, somewhere. I had hoped to see the inside, to touch the walls and feel the floors under my feet.

"Is there a tour?" asks a slight, warm woman in a white shirt. She's peering through the screen door; she's hoping too.

"It's closed," I say.

And we are both disappointed.

Until Anne O'Sullivan begins to speak.

I discover she is an actress who has played The Belle of Amherst. I discover the spirit of Emily Dickinson, as felt in the body and mind of this here-and-now woman.




We talk for a long time, and I find an Emily I never would have otherwise found. I find, too, that the Emily I came to see is buried somewhere nearby.




I would not have known about the cemetery, but for Anne O'Sullivan. Nor would I have known that the nearby Amherst College had one of only two replicas of the latest possible daguerreotypes of Dickinson.




Closed is a hard thing. We think we've missed what we came for. But sometimes it is exactly what is needed as we wait, unawares, for Anne O'Sullivan.



On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)



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WordCandy Wednesday: When One is Truly Ready

Photo by Claire Burge

Want to make Wednesday simple and sweet? Blog WordCandy. Can't wait to see yours.


Grab the WordCandy Wednesday Button :)




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On, In, and Around Mondays: Touch Stuff, Get Happy

Eggplant ends, and hot peppers. The skin of an onion. A few stray seeds.

This is the stuff of potential made-things. And I live with two girls who always seem to know the secret: We are made happier when our hands touch textures, when we fill our senses with sound and scent.

Kelly Sauer knows this. She started buying books and magazines again, because they fill her in a way that cyber-reading does not.

I still love my cyber-reads. I learn so much. I find people, and people find me. But there is something about a made-thing that is so important. And, yes, we are made happier when we engage with them. So I understand Kelly's books and magazines.

I was reminded of the power of made-things again this morning, reading about knitting groups, and how they can touch the world.

All of this spoke to the dynamic I've begun to cultivate on Sunday afternoons. Touch, experience, fill the senses. Cut the eggplant, or the onions. Water the garden. Read a book with real pages. Fill a bath and add rosemary oil. Just one day. But it makes my week.

Oh now, I can't wait for tomorrow...
_____

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)



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On, In and Around Mondays: Focusing on the Wild

Every year, this lawn gets wilder. 

I have been letting it happen, even making it happen by spreading dandelion seeds to the wind, by refusing to mow the leopard-faced flowers that look something like violets but smaller and more elongated. This morning, I was greeted by more buttercups, more purple spike flowers, more wild mustard than I was last year in May.

I love this wildness, this lack of landscaping focus—in a county that prizes the pristine, the trimmed, the perfectly edged.

Suddenly, the thought rises in me—a thought I've been toying with in conversations and private musings for the past few weeks. I'm unfocused. Like my wild lawn. I am never going to win the prize for the best rose garden, the biggest and reddest tomatoes, the greenest dandelion-free grass. I am also never going to win the prize for being a national speaker, a top-selling author. I can't stand the focus it requires. 

One of the conversations I had, concerning this matter, was with a visionary photographer friend. She is far more than a photographer, dipping her hands into business and investments, and all manner of networking and people-building. I told her I really couldn't see her focusing on one aspect of photography and trying to make a name for herself that way. I asked, "Can you really picture yourself on a 5,000-ways-to-photograph-a-biscuit track?"

I also told her that this is a particular kind of gift, this wildness in her spirit, this vision she has to keep thinking up the next thing and then moving on.

I'm thinking this is me too. I can focus. I can focus on my wild ways. Spreading seed, cultivating the purple in life, building the raucous creativity of color in people and systems. I can let this happen, yes. I can even make it happen.

_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)



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On, In, and Around Mondays: Re-Covering Time

I place a white porcelain cover on the small white porcelain tea pot. Over this, I place the white tea cozy, with the red and beige stripes and two little red birds, seemingly in conversation. I leave them to their private whisperings, give the tea time to steep.

Loose tea takes longer than a tea bag. I must find a spoon. I must twist the cover off the tea caddy and dip inside, measure out what I desire, and scatter it into the tea basket. I must let the leaves unfurl in the steamy darkness. Is eight minutes—start to finish—too long to wait for heaven?

Now sipping my Christmas tea, the eight minutes already a memory, I peruse two different books. One about tea, one about bread. I turn the pages slowly, write my favorite lines onto colored cards. Tea cuttings, I learn, take around a year to a year and three months to reach a stage where they can be planted in the tea garden. Then they must grow 15-18 inches before they are eligible to be severely pruned, and once again take time to grow into a flat table, a plucking table.

Bread is similar, in regards to time. We can use flour artificially aged with bleach and bromate (bromate being outlawed in European countries, because it is a carcinogen). Or we can use flour set out in the air, where oxygen, the very thing we breathe, will refine qualities, ultimately cultivate taste.

We don't have time for the line, said an essay in the book I reviewed last week.

The line, a single row of words—have we really no time?

If we have no time for the line, we have no time for loose tea. We have no time for the tea bush, gently coaxed to golden bud. We have no time for finely structured bread.

Let me, let me re-cover time... for the single line, the tea, the bread.

________

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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On, In, and Around Mondays: Figuring

"Everything is terrible!" she wails, and leans into my arms.

Everything is not terrible.

There are worse days, worse places, worse lives. But to her, in this moment, everything is terrible. She is our sensitive child. And maybe the past few days of mini crisis, the weeks of us-too-busy-for-her, have piled up.

I understand. I myself am in a time of "figuring." Looking for some way to feel a sense of space. It always comes 'round to this. I empty my life, I fill it back up. I feel burdened. I must re-figure.

Walk away, I think.

So on Friday I go skating .



On Saturday I don't write (thus my lateness here today), but instead keep a promise to make a blog for my Eldest.

On Sunday we go walking. I laugh at my Youngest's way with the world. She is making snow hats for every fire hydrant we pass (and in my laughter I forget to take photos, which is a small regret).





On Sunday evening we take time for my Youngest, the fire-hydrant-snow-hat girl who thinks everything is terrible. Time to figure how to make a Japanese tent (is there such a thing?) that she actually fills with Chinese items. We find some Japanese music and download it; we change my plans for French-toast dinner and order-in Japanese.









Lights down low, she is finally smiling. I am still figuring. But for the moment everything is suspended.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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When I Am Weak, Then I Am Weak

We spend too much time focused on our weaknesses.

So says author Tom Rath and the Gallup study that underpins StrengthsFinder 2.0: Discover Your Strengths.

When we focus on our weaknesses, notes Rath, we are less likely to be engaged and productive at work (might this also be true for school, church, marriage, friendship?).

Yet our culture idolizes the "underdog" (and maybe our faith does too, with an out-of-context application of "when I am weak, then I am strong"). Rath says that movies like Rudy— about a guy with no talent for football who eventually gets to play in the game— feed this view of the superiority of the underdog. But, he says, is it really worth it for Rudy to have spent thousands of hours of practice to make one play, in one game?

Better that Rudy be directed to enhance his strengths. Not so interesting as a movie, perhaps, but better.

Rath's book comes with access to an on-line test, so you can find your strengths and begin to make the best of them. I'm not sure we all need to take the test. But I wonder how this alteration in perspective might change how we manage, teach, and relate.

For instance, does everybody on the team and everybody in the schoolroom really need to be trained in everything? Or can we just admit that so-and-so would make a better singer than a mathematician and adjust our approach accordingly?

Thinking on this, I wondered if our concept of the Renaissance Man (and woman :) has also led us to try to be strong in everything, even our weaknesses, rather than strengthening our strengths. We might not get to play tuba (or football) then, but since our lives aren't the movies, maybe that would be better in the end.


Names Tree photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Loving Monday: How We Fall Apart

What keeps a business, a family strong?

Beckett's chapter on 'family strength' focuses on balancing family and work, but I wondered if it might nicely dovetail with another book I've been reading How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.

While Beckett talked about the need to balance family and work, in some ways adding even more responsibilities to a person's mental plate, I considered whether there might be a subtle alternative.

Stop trying to balance it all, and just trim the "all", on both the business and family side of things. Heck, not just business and family, but also spiritual and recreational. (Yes, Ann K., I did think of Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families)

In How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins notes that companies who are doing well sometimes get "insulated by success" which causes them to "lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place." This can lead to an undisciplined pursuit of more— "more scale, more growth, more acclaim," characterized by "growing faster than they can achieve with excellence."

Collins sums it up, "Although complacency and resistance to change remain dangers to any successful enterprise, overreaching better captures how the mighty fall."

And this is why I didn't feel guilty on Sunday when I missed church because we missed the time change.

My husband slept in for a long time, my Eldest daughter was fooling around with Spanish guitar (something daddy's been teaching her in the evenings now), and my youngest worked on a book she's writing (which my eldest is secretly turning into a graphic novel). I made a cup of tea, moved around the kitchen cleaning slowly (Sundays always get me down when I come home to the morning mess after church).

It felt good to have trimmed the day, and I wondered why I had to wait for a mistake to make it happen.


Skyscraper in Chelsea photo, by L.L. Barkat.

RELATED:
HighCallingBlogs Tightrope
Glynn's Loving Monday: Writing a Vision
Monica's Loving Monday: Vision and Balance
Lyla's Loving Monday: Why Family Matters

Speaking of Silence

Of late, I've been feeling silent. Life has been full— among other things... writing, writing, writing, to finish my second book... and now cleaning up messes before I send it off.

One of the ways I try to achieve synergy in such moments is to use one platform to explore or sustain another. So when I began working on my book's 'Silence' chapter, and I had a speaking engagement on the book of Esther, why naturally I chose to delve into the silence of God.

[if you think you'd enjoy the irony of a talk on Silence, why, have a listen here]

Similarly, in the past few months, I've often used my prayer and devotion blog as a way to pre-write about the various spiritual practices that will show up in God in the Yard.

Sometimes people ask me how I get it all done. Blogging, writing books, home educating, public speaking. It is this kind of synergistic approach that makes things work. Well, and the willingness to sometimes descend into silence.

Old Chest photo, by L.L. Barkat

RELATED:
Bradley's approach to summer blog silence

Follow Your Bliss

While I was off to an artist's retreat in Texas at Laity Lodge, my friendly book club buddies at High Calling Blogs were finishing up Make the Impossible Possible. I was sorry to have to race through the end of the book to catch up. Even now, I'm panting.

Ironically, or maybe fittingly, the final chapters were about the experience I was actually having: following my bliss, embracing a sense of 'flow' in my life, stepping towards dreams. I used to be a graphic artist. I don't want that career again. But I knew I belonged at this artist's retreat. Why? I still can't tell you for sure. But a few things Strickland says are the beginning of an explanation...

...someone wise once said that luck favors the prepared mind....

...[we] need to trust the small, transcendent experiences of [our lives]...to explore [our] passions and draw from them the inspirational fire and fuel that make extraordinary achievements possible...

...flow... is any experience in which you become absorbed so completely into what you're doing that the world fades away and nothing else seems to matter...

... he took his dreams seriously and lived his life in a way that prepared him for the day when opportunity might favor him. When it did, [he] was ready...

...A dream is about building something— relationships, identity, quality of experience. Because dreams rise out of genuine human needs, they feed the spirit in a profoundly satisfying way. A genuine dream brings direction, conviction, substance, and satisfaction to your life the moment you commit yourself to it.

What Strickland doesn't say is how amorphous the beginning of a dream can be. We feel something, that sense of 'flow' and we feel we're at a cusp. The way he first felt when he touched clay in that classroom long ago. Hunched over intently, digging in, shaping, did he envision an arts center that would profoundly alter the lives of the poor? Did he envision a music hall that would bring music to their ears? A greenhouse growing orchids so frail they'd re-ignite the hardened souls who'd tend them? No. But he put his hands to the clay.

Like I said, I don't know what clay I put my hands to this past week. But the coolness of it, the smoothness, the way it is sticking to my fingers feels right. And for now it's enough to follow that bliss.

TOTAL ASIDE (well, maybe):
Speaking of not knowing where our dreams will take us, Stone Crossings is going to be translated into Korean. I'm a little dazed at the thought. But happy, of course.

RELATED POSTS:
High Calling Blogs Final Chapters: Tell Your Story
Laura's Tell His Story
LL's LL and Lauren (But Not Jim) at Laity Lodge

POETRY FRIDAY:
High Calling Blogs RAP: Surprised by Words (see post for our NEW POETRY PROMPT)
Ann’s Meeting Words
Erica’s Random Acts of Poetry: Petals
LL’s daughters’Ballads, Grasses and Bliss
Brian’s The Anatomy of a Gift
Laure’s In Itself, To Serve You
Yvette’s Freedom
Monica’s Gratitude, Carpool and Cubicle
Barbara’s The Dance of Pandora
Jim’s Détente
Marcus's Christ is Risen, But
nAncY's Adoration
Cindy's Spring Clean
Crystal's Uneven Exchange
Laura's Burden
Mike's Cool
The Unknown Contributor's Anyday