Yesterday I made time. I knew I needed to. Stress has been high, sleep has been hard to come by, mental, emotional, and physical clutter were building in my body.
I threw books, a notebook, and pens in a bag. Parked at the Oxford Conservation Park, hopped on a skateboard and cruised for a bit. I found some shoreline near my thinking/praying tree at the Oxford Cemetery. And I sat. And breathed. And prayed. And listened. And watched. And read.
Marcus Aurelius had this to say in his “Meditations”–
Everything is transitory–the knower and the known.
Constant awareness that everything is born from change. The knowledge that there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. You think the only seeds are the ones that make plants or children. Go deeper.
Even when we know that’s true, change can still be tough to take in. I’ve become a fan of Ryan Holiday and The Daily Stoic and his Painted Porch Bookshop near Austin, Texas. He motivated me to pull Marcus off my bookshelf. Holiday points out the tenet of stoicism that asserts that we can’t control much of what life throws at us, but we can control how we respond to it. That’s something to sit with.
This is what Luci Shaw says in her poem, “Few Words”–
To write with
restraint, with
few words,
is to give each
a great power
that stands
for itself on
the page–
this red bird,
that crescent moon.
Each sentinel
of meaning
pointing us
to what
it stands for.
I prefer to write and speak with few words. The right ones when I am lucky enough. To listen more than I talk. Creation, God, and other people have much more to offer than I do.
A friend sent me a copy of Allen Levi’s “Theo of Golden” in the mail, saying it seemed like it would resonate with me. When I started reading it, the story starts a short time before Easter. I am a sucker for books that correspond in time to where we are, so I jumped in. It’s too early to write about the book in itself, but I am drawn to three ideas on the blurb on the back of the book.
It says it is a novel about:
- “the power of creative generosity”
- “the importance of wonder to a purposeful life”
- “the individual threads of kindness that bind us to one another”
The phrase “creative generosity” has been on my mind since reading it. We can be generous with money, generous with time, in ways that have become expected. But what does it mean to be creative with our generosity? To offer something unexpected? What does it feel like to receive creative generosity? Like someone sending you a book unexpectedly in the mail, thinking it may speak to you or wake up something in you?
Wonder is my jam. I’ve written “Wired for Wonder” as my mantra or a guiding principle. The idea of the “importance of wonder to a purposeful life” is intriguing. Bringing wonder and purpose together is both necessary, but often overlooked. I want to walk farther down this path.
We get that kindness is a good thing and that we should be kind to one another and to ourselves. Well, we might not all understand that, but we should. That kindness binds us to each other, I want to dwell and reflect more on that. We need to realize the connective threads of our humanity more these days than I can express.
Though I have started and am loving “Theo of Golden,” the gift of these phrases and thoughts before I even opened it, is its own creative generosity.
Yesterday I made time to sit and read outside when I almost didn’t. This morning I made time to write it down and share it with those who will take the time to read it. Today, I hope you make time to do what the Spirit calls you to do.