Friday night grateful list

This has been a most excellent week with my guys. Very peaceful. Very quiet. Daily walks (I missed one especially rainy day, but that's only because I got caught up in my calligraphy and didn't notice it getting dark. I was still planning to go out, however briefly.). Good food. Naps. Netflix. Wii bowling. What's not to love?

The weather was generally quite lovely. Below are my panoramas, from about the same spot in the beach, each day. We also tended to walk all together around sunset, which is a lovely time on the beach--and the tide was out!

This could be one of my favorite places on earth. Top 5, for sure. And to get to chill with the guys, have good talks--I think we solved at least one of the main challenges of the world this week--and dial up another episode of Stranger Things... pretty blissful.

This week I also found myself grateful for:

Great home help while we're away. The house, the dogs, the chickens--they are all in excellent hands. We couldn't do it without that extra set of hands!

Technology. As much as I didn't dial in to work very much--both Alan and I consciously made an effort to disconnect as much as possible--it was good to be able to check on things as needed. 

Graham crackers and milk. All these years later, graham crackers and milk is still THE quintessential snack.

Pens and paper. In spite of all the technology, I still loooooove pens and paper. And making lists. In a moment of silliness, I talked myself into two online challenges: #rockyourhandwriting and #planwithme, both part of the Bullet Journal community. Not sure why I thought doing both would work, but the handwriting one should sort of write itself, right? And the planner one, well, I've been working on making my daily planner really work for me for quite a while, and I thought this would kick it up a notch. Time will tell. Check me out on Instagram if you're curious about the posts, but of course, they'll pop into the top right column every time I post, too.

Bonus people. I have friends who are friends because of we forged a one-to-one relationship--we went to school together, or worked together, or we met sometime in the past. But then there are people I met because of those primary relationships, who have become important in my life--friends of friends who became friends. Those are bonus people. Bonus people are awesome. I had a lengthy online conversation with two such lovely ladies this week that reminded me of all the things we have in common, in spite of very different circumstances. I love (and am grateful for) commonalities.

Seth. What can I say about that young man that I haven't said a thousand times before? He's delightful and so good to both Alan and I, and his relatives from his many families, too. We get to see him a few times this fall, so I'm feeling great about that. And his independence grows with each new experience he tackles, and I'm feeling good about that too. So grateful for this summer, for our time together, and his joyful presence around the house.

Reminders. I love to put myself in the path of good reminders, and part of my #planwithme challenge is going to be even more intentional with reminders that put me in the right space for good work, and a good life. These few reminders have been especially poignant for me lately:

(Stumbling is not falling, in case that's hard to read!)

Wishing you a peaceful and picking-daisies kind of weekend.

Midweek reminder: My need of God absolutely clear

Absolutely clear
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

-Hāfez (1325–1390)

Midweek reminder: Everyone struggles

I've long been a fan of the quote:

Recently I saw this paragraph, and it really spoke to me, in a similar vein. How often we forget that we're all human, after all.

“The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make you unloveable or undesirable or undeserving of care. It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. Everyone struggles. Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart. During these times, we aren’t always easy to be around—and that’s okay. No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time. Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult. And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you feel helpless or sad. But those things aren’t all of who you are and they certainly don’t discount your worth as a human being. The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved. You can be difficult and still be cared for. You can be less than perfect, and still be deserving of compassion and kindness.” - Daniel Koepke

If you need that compassion today, I hope you get it. And if you're in a position to give, please do.

Midweek reminder: Your work need not be lost

Lately I seem to stumble across quotes that I have long appreciated, but in a larger context. I really enjoy that, finding the words around the well-known nugget. It can shed a whole new light. This passage from Thoreau is a good example, as it is often actually misquoted: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."

Listen how it was really written, below. The elaboration I find much more lovely, but probably not quite as "greeting card." Alas.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. -Henry David Thoreau

That paragraph calls me to live in the woods; simply, quietly, peacefully. And that if I can't live in the woods literally, I can simplify and scale back my life in the present... to live in the woods, figuratively.

What does this passage say to you?

Midweek reminder: Sunsets never fail to inspire

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” -John Berger from Ways of Seeing

I was walking on the beach a couple of evenings back, at the end of the day. When I first went out, with about 45 minutes of sunshine left, I was virtually alone; maybe three or four other people were out, wandering. As the sunset neared, people were drawn out of homes up and down the beach, many actually brought deck chairs and settled in, a few even got ready to start small bonfires to enjoy in the coming darkness, but all of them were facing the sun, watching it descend. By the time the sun lowered in the sky to touch the ocean, there were probably a few dozen spectators.

I sat on a dune and watched the people and the sun with equal fascination. If you didn't know any better, it might have appeared as if we didn't believe the sun would come up again, and this was a goodbye party. But also, it was stunning. Who could not watch something so beautiful, so rich, and so fleeting, even if it happens every night?

I can't count the number of times as I've driven home on an evening, I've been compelled to pull over and capture the sunset. I know the sun will set again tomorrow, and the day after that, and be just as--if not more so--beautiful. But something about the act of the sun slipping out of sight is, as the quote above implies, mysterious.

When was the last time you watched the sun set? How about a sunrise?

Midweek reminder: Honesty is inherently generous

Honesty is not the same as confession. “Be honest” (often “brutally honest”) is a fundamental tenet of memoir writing. But that does not mean you include every detail, play out every emotional drama, chronicle everything you did during the span of time over which the book or essay takes place. Honesty means not skirting uncomfortable truths and not pulling punches when it comes to recounting situations and feelings. Confession means blurting out a bunch of stuff and just leaving it there for shock value rather than doing the hard work of organizing it and pruning it and deciphering its relevance to the larger picture. Confessing means asking the reader for something—for forgiveness, for punishment, for some kind of response that makes you feel less alone. Honesty means offering something to the reader—a piece of yourself or a set of suggestions. Honesty means making the reader feel less alone. Honesty is inherently generous. Confession is inherently needy and intrusive. -Meghan Daum

From Salon, a recent piece on memoir writing.

Midweek reminder: Plow deep and straight and not cut corners

You probably saw this ad on Sunday. Or at least, you've seen it in the days since the Super Bowl, as it is widely considered one of the best ads of the day (though from what else I hear, it was not a tough crowd to stand out in).

But did you remember the words? The quick cadence of Paul Harvey's voice is one of the things that makes the spot memorable, though it doesn't lend to recall. When I happened upon the text of the ad and then watched it, listened to it--again, and again--I got a big old lump in my throat, thinking about my Grandpa Goerlitz and his farmer ways. And his hands. Those hands around the 40-second mark--my Grandpa had hands like those.

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse with hunk of car tire, who can make a harness out hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, put in another 72 hours." So God made the farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to yean lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the leg of a meadowlark."

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and brake, and disk, and plow, and plant, and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his son says that he wants to spend his life doing what Dad does. 

So God made a farmer.

Midweek reminder: The fog is telling you something

his blog post has been in my mind for awhile now, and I've even sent it to a few dear ones who I thought would appreciate the sentiments as applicable for where they're currently at, whether their life challenges are personal, professional, spiritual... or of course, a combination of it all!

We've each had times of greater fog and lesser fog... (and if you haven't, I suppose it will sound awful and ominous to say "your time is coming," but life does seem to hold challenges for 99.999% of us). For me the key, and the most salient point the writer makes, is that without the fog, we don't have a great need for a lantern to light our way.

"Life is hard. The road is long and narrow. The workers are few. We may see more fog than light for years at a time. But the fog is the entire point. It represents our need for the light and the confirmation of our calling. A life without fog is a life of complacency and boredom. It’s reading the last page of the novel and skipping the conflict, climax and resolve."

I may have already mentioned this, but really, click over. It may not speak to you, now, today, but my guess is that it will; at the very least, it might compel you to reach out and be a bit of light in someone else's fog. I'm a big believer in the Lantern, but I'm also a big believer in each of us being a little light to each other.

Midweek reminder: C.S. Lewis x2

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."

[To have faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

Both quotes from C.S. Lewis; both were needed reminders in my week.

Midweek reminder: Life is not so much about beginnings and endings

ut in my own life, as I grew older, I realized I had only questions. For a long time this made me feel vulnerable and afraid, and then suddenly, as though I had reached an emotional puberty, it made me feel vulnerable and comfortable... What was more important was that I finally realized that making sense of my life meant, in part, accepting the shifting nature of its sands... A kind of earthquake in the center of my life shook everything up, and left me to rearrange the pieces... As the aftershocks reverberate, I have had to approach some simple tasks in new ways... Looking back at my past. Loving my husband. Raising my children. Being a woman. It is no accident that each of these tasks is couched in the present participle, that lovely part of speech that simply goes on and on and on. Oddly enough, what I have learned... is that life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It’s about muddling through the middle. That is what I’m doing now. Muddling through the middle. -Anna Quindlen

Midweek reminder: The canvas of life

n the canvas of life, a flat landscape would be pretty boring. It is the valleys and the mountains that help us to appreciate the flatlands. It is the dark that makes us appreciate the light, and the cold that makes us appreciate the warm. -Anne Copeland 

 Many have expressed this sentiment in similar ways, but her phrasing spoke to me with its simplicity and the visual aspect of a canvas, imagining one's life as a painting.

What would the painting of your life look like?

Midweek reminder: The magnitude or grace of what we're being offered

can feel how large, how essential this moment is as it’s happening; that is what I have come to love about being an adult, to the extent that I can claim that title: that one knows more about how good things are, how much they matter, as they’re happening, that knowledge isn’t necessarily retrospective anymore.

When I was younger, I missed so much, failing to be fully present, only recognizing the quality of particular moments and gifts after the fact. Perhaps that’s the one thing that being “grown up” is: to realize in the present the magnitude or grace of what we’re being offered.
-Mark Doty, Heaven’s Coast

Found ages ago at one of my favorite blogs: A Design So Vast.

Midweek reminder: Red yarn ties our hearts

n keeping with the back-to-school, where-did-the-summer-go angst that's rolling around my brain this week:

Life seems to flood by, taking our loves quickly in its flow. In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time’s chart is magnified, shown in its particularity, focused, so that with each celebration of maturity there is also a pang of loss. This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too--how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts.
-Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

Midweek reminder: Agreements

would have sworn I've posted about The Four Agreements before. Shocked, actually, when I looked through my blog archives, so find not a mention of it, since when I read about the agreements 13-14 years ago now, pieces of them were a-ha moments for me.

I remember vividly reading about the book in Oprah's magazine, and then getting the book at the train station in Philadelphia. I read the little book in the two-hour train ride to NYC; I'd been in Philly for business and then was headed into the city to see my brother and sister-in-law... 1998 or 1999... can't remember the year exactly, but I do remember the book, and thinking that it wasn't really all that much better in full book form, that the Oprah article pretty much covered it (and some of the expanded writing in the book is a little new-age-jargonish for me).

But that didn't stop me from reflecting, and continuing to reflect at various times in the years since, on the agreements themselves (the author has since added a fifth, which I find less powerful/revolutionary than the other four). I can't say I agree with every word or sentiment in each of the five points, or think they are the be-all, end-all of what it takes reach success. But, if I reflect on less-than-stellar interpersonal situations I've been involved with in my life, and think of them in hindsight using these agreements, every one of them could have been improved or even avoided, with these principals in mind.

So, common sense? Sure. But some days it seems hardly common in this world, what with how we humans interact with each other. Hence, the need to remind myself:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions: Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best: Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

5. Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen: Don’t believe yourself or anybody else. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind the words, and you will understand the real message.
-Don Miguel Ruiz

Midweek reminder: He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good

ou have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.

If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

-Matthew 5:38-47

Midweek reminder: There will always be comfort for every sorrow

 "As long as this exists," I thought, "and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts, I cannot be unhappy." The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. -Anne Frank

Midweek reminder: Never forget how much I love you

vividly remember the first time I heard this letter; it was in the Ken Burns Civil War PBS series, and my rather unsentimental (at the time) young heart fairly jolted at the words. I specifically remember getting the chills round about the last paragraph. Quite amazing how a momentary emotion can stay with one...

Fast forward almost 20 years and my more mature (you know what I mean) sentimental nature is now pretty well documented! So you can imagine the self-indulgent wallow that is possible for me, listening to these dear words. (The swell of violin music doesn't hurt, either.)

Here's how I first heard it.



But I also appreciate reading it, words on a "page."

This letter serves as a reminder to me that, even in our dramatically different non-civil-war times, letting my dear ones know that they are loved, and that I'm sorry if I've been petty or catty or just plain mean, is not simply a thing to strive for, but to make a reality, every single day. Life is way too short to not say those words, every single day. 

July 14, 1861
Camp Clark, Washington


My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more...


I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt...


Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all these chains to the battle field.


The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness...


But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again...

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

Born March 28, 1829 in Smithfield, R.I., Ballou was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.; Brown University in Providence, R.I. and the National Law School in Ballston, N.Y. He was admitted to the Rhode Island Bar in 1853.

Ballou devoted his brief life to public service. He was elected in 1854 as clerk of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, later serving as its speaker.  He married Sarah Hart Shumway on October 15, 1855, and the following year saw the birth of their first child, Edgar. A second son, William, was born in 1859. Ballou immediately entered the military in 1861 after the war broke out. He became judge advocate of the Rhode Island militia and was 32 at the time of his death at the first Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861.

When he died, his wife was 24. She later moved to New Jersey to live out her life with her son, William, and never re-married. She died at age 80 in 1917. Sullivan and Sarah Ballou are buried next to each other at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, RI. There are no known living descendants.

Ironically, Sullivan Ballou’s letter was never mailed. Although Sarah would receive other, decidedly more upbeat letters, dated after the now-famous letter from the battlefield, the letter in question would be found among Sullivan Ballou’s effects when Gov. William Sprague of Rhode Island traveled to Virginia to retrieve the remains of his state’s sons who had fallen in battle.

source

Midweek reminder: A bit of color is a public service

Midweek reminder: It was never between you and them, anyway

uring a week where quotes and misquotes have gone viral, I thought I'd turn to a quote with well-known origins... An oldie but a goodie, and one that speaks to me every time I read it.

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered:
          Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives:
          Be kind anyway.
What you spend years creating others could destroy overnight:
          Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous:
          Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten:
          Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it may never be enough:
          Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God:
          It was never between you and them anyway."
-Mother Teresa

Mid-week reminder: My whole nature leaps back to the toys

opened up my A Year With C.S. Lewis yesterday morning, smack to a page that I just had to share. The structure of putting it into a poem is my particular little genius (ha!)...

My own experience is something like this. I am progressing
along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen
and godless condition, absorbed in the merry meeting
with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work
that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book,
when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease,
or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us
all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down.

At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses
look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly,
bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind
that I should be in at all times. I remind myself
that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart,
that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure
is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed,
and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God
and drawing its strength from the right sources.
But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature
leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me,
to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me
under the threat because it is now associated with the misery
of those few days.

Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation
is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours
and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me.
Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy
when the hated bath is over--I shake myself as dry as I can
and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness,
if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed.

And that is why tribulations cannot cease
until God either sees us remade or sees
that our remaking is now hopeless.

-from The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

Bless you, dear Clive. I really wish I had known you. You certainly wrote as if you know me.

And in alignment with these thoughts, a video crossed my path as well. It's not very long (in the TED world, at least), and he makes some thoughtful points:


Such a great reminder to live well, choose happiness and give up the need to be right. Oh, and that parenting thing too, definitely that. :)