Eat Pray Love

So I borrowed a book from my parents house over Christmas time.  I didn’t ask so I gues it is technically a stolen book.  It was on my list of books to read. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is another one of those books where the author takes a year, does something out of the ordinary and writes a refelctive book about it.  During her year set apart, she spend 4 months in Italy, India and Indonesia.  The first two parts of the book, I really enjoyed reading.  Although I wouldn’t be as bold as she was in her travels, I loved hearing about the people and the spiritual change that took place through these months.  I was concerned about her weight change but I guess that is my issue and not hers.

I was intrigued by her spiritual retreat time in India.  I don’t know if I could be in silence for long periods of time.  I don’t know if I could scrub a floor as a spiritual discipline.  Is there a way to find the Holy without all the inconvenience?  It is interesting that we want everything to be convenient from food to religion.  It is just the life that we live.  So as I think about the Lenten season, I may be feeling a call to find the Holy whether it is convenient or not.  Maybe, I need to set time apart to just be silent so God can talk and I can listen.  I am smiling because my dad told me I should do this listening thing.  I don’t think he put this book in my bedroom at Christmas time, do you?

It’s Not About the Hair

So I am trying to leave my hair at a longer length than usual.  I have so much hair that this is a problem.  Right now, I am dealing with the hair around my ears flipping out, the stage when I usually get so frustrated that I just go get it cut off.  I keep telling myself that if I can just last another day or week or so, that it will all settle down and I will look young and glamorous.

Then I read the book by Debra Jarvis, It’s Not About the Hair. She is a hospital chaplain that works with cancer patients and within her life has to deal with cancer herself.  This is a great book!  She helps us to know what it feels like, what kinds of things cancer patients need to hear and not hear and she does it all with a touch of humor.  This is her story.  She is very straight forward, giving insight into the medical, spiritual, and emotional side of life with cancer.  She is also able to share insights  from other paitents that she has counseled.

This is a quote from her book:

“Words are powerful.  That’s why peole past up affirmations on their bathroom mirrors like, “I accept myself just as I am.”  That’s why people memorize scripture and poetry and mantras.

“Gods said, ‘Let there be Light.’  And there was light.

“‘Lather. Rinse. Repeat.’ I never questioned it.

“Words can call something into being.  Words can also destroy.”

Memoirs

I have no intentions of writing my memoirs.  They just are not that interesting and I don’t recall the details of my life.  It would have to be a memoir with the assistance of my sisters and brother Steve.  I remember being happy, walking to school, riding bikes to the pool in the summer, getting sick on soda at the 4th of July National Gypsum party.  But I don’t remember what I wore on my first day of school or the names of all my teachers or even the color of my bedroom.

When I was reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I kept thinking this is just too incredible.  How could people live this way?  It is so illogical for parents to move their children so often, have such lack of nutrition, and yet the children are able to function in society in the end.  Well, three out of the four are able to function in society.  The book starts out with the daughter sighting her mother on the streets of New York, going through the trash dumpster and being embarassed as she is going to a party with friends .  I can not imagine the feelings when seeing someone that you care about on the streets.  And in the end, the mom is more comfortable/ desires to be in that situation rather than in a fixed home with rules and regulations hemming her in on all sides.

Now, I don’t think all people who are on the streets desire to be on the streets.  But in this particular memoir, this is the way the parents want to live and tried to live with their children.  They often went from town to town or even slept outside.  However, the author wrote of these days as happy ones, most of the time.  That they lived in anticipation of their father making it rich and building a glass castle to live in.  Perhaps this is an invitation to look at our dreams and see what is holding us back.

I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I grew up- as a child.  I remember later in life I wanted to be a librarian and a travel agent.  I still love being around books but being a librarian is now more than putting books on a shelf.  It is called the IMC, Informatoin Media Center.  And travel agents are not needed now with the internet, people make their own travel plans.  I need to ask my sister what we were going to be when we grew up.  I just know that I was happy when I was young, good memories.

2 Romances and depression

I remember reading romance novels in high school during the summer.  Even during college, I think an easy read was a romance novel.   In general, I enjoy reading about real people.  Biographies are my favorite.   When a couple of romance novels were suggested to me, I thought, well, sounds fun enough.   Yes, they were easy enough to read but disappointing how “quickly” the couple in the story were in bed together.  The characters had no commitment to each other.  They hardly knew each other.  What did I think I was going to read?  Perhaps, I just thought in a romantic story, they would love each other for their virtues, for their good character traits.

I picked up a book from the library- can’t even remember the title.  It was icky!  I just thought, what possesses a person to even write such junk.  It was so depressing and negative.  I would rather read a romance than something that just makes me want to wash my hands.

Interesting what people write about and perhaps just as interesting is what people want to read.  When I look at the recommended books for book clubs, I wonder who has decided what is good to read.  I enjoy reading about how people deal with real problems and share how they have found solutions in a positive way, with integrity and grace.  National Public Radio has been sharing a collection of stories from families- today’s, story was a father’s story to his daughter about parenting.  These are the stories that are worth sharing.

Sarah’s Key

I actually read this book earlier in the fall but just haven’t had time to sit and reflect.  In fact, it is hard to just stay seated right now.  This book was really moving and enlightening.  It brought about a discussion over family secrets.  If your family had a secret, would you want to know about it.  Are there family secrets that are so big that your life is turned upside down and inside out?

In Sarah’s key, Sarah, the main character, has such a burden for the life of her brother that she is never her own person.  She lives and dies because of her brother.  The interesting part in this story is the historical tie with the French during the Nazi occupation.  The book is written in two voices, Sarah, and then there is Julia, the modern day perspective, who is doing research on the roundup of Parisian Jews.  So the book goes back and forth between the two perspectives for most of the book and then Sarah’s voice is silenced.  We only later find out what happened to her when Julia searches for Sarah’s son and reveals to him the family secret.

So what are the family secrets?  Perhaps I should find out.

Behind the scene

I just finished the book, Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout.  This is a good book to read.  It invites you to think about the many lives that we touch, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in dramatic ways.  However, it really made me think about how we don’t realize the sorrow and tragedy that lies behinds people’s lives.  The houses that I pass while walking the dog have people living in each one with stories to them.  During a recent walk, the trash was at the curb before trash day, because a family was being divided by divorce.  It was sad to see toys and golf clubs and computer equipment, all left behind.  It was a story of happier days, of play and family time.  Now, all that is gone, disposed of at the curb.

In Olive Kitteridge, each chapter is a story of how this woman, Olive, has an encounter with another family in her town.  Sometime the story is about her and how she is changed by the other person.  Sometimes the story is about the other person and how Olive’s presence changes the outcome.  Do not miss the chapter called A Different Road!  It is a hilarious story of a bathroom stop gone wrong.  Perhaps you will think twice before stopping for the bathroom.  If possible, go straight home.

Smith magazine is collecting a six word memoir or life lesson.   I invited the area clergy to share one at a recent meeting and I shared mine.  My six words are: Turn the page, more to come.  They commented how my six words  gave insight about me- my love of books and my sense of hope even within change.  It was fun to see how Olive changed in each chapter.  I can see how I have changed with the turning of the pages.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: approaching the end

Maybe, I don’t give vegetables enough credit.  Maybe, I need to expand my acceptance of the variety of colorful things that can be grown in a garden.  I really leave the vegetable garden decision up to my husband.  He has tried some different things; those winter tomatoes that you store in newspaper until the winter when they really ripen, swiss chard that was bitter and ended up in the compost, and these purple striped beans, flaming dragon beans which we did like especially when you closed your eyes.  What we really like to grow in a garden are tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, even cauliflower (although this year it didn’t grow correctly)! 

I remember fondly going to Grandma and Grandpa Harvey’s garden.  It was huge!  I mean really, really big.  They had a big family to feed and even when the kids were grown, they came back for visits so the garden helped provide food for the table.  I remember snapping beans around the kitchen table and how we looked forward to eating Grandma’s pickled beets. 

People talk about victory gardens during the war.  So why don’t we encourage every family to have a garden now?  In the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I think the author is a little ambitious to think it would be possible for everyone to only eat locally.  However, she states up front that this is not her expectation!  She understands that we all don’t have the ability that her family has to grow the majority of their food and to purchase the remaining food locally.  The author does advocate for people to understand how food is grown or in the case of meat, raised.  Our society doesn’t realize the food process, the additives and the chemicals that we are ingesting.  We need to be more aware of the conditions that we put animals in for our consumption. 

I would miss the bananas.  I don’t know of any local banana growers.  I would have to give squash a chance.  And the really big thing- the enormous hurdle would be for me to stop drinking Diet Coke (all chemicals).  So I am approaching the end of the book.  So has my life change?  Not yet, but I am a work in progress.

1960s

Lots of things were happening in the 1960s, political and cultural changes, my birth day.  Recently, I read the book by Kathryn Stockett entitled The Help.  This book is a well written historical fiction.  The setting is Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s.  The characters are women, the maids and the society ladies that they serve.  I wanted to say, you got to be kidding me, surely those type of things didn’t happen in my lifetime.  People shouldn’t treat, or should I say, use other people in such a way.  Then I wonder, if we live in a society where people still manipulate others for personal gain.   I know, your saying, Lori open your eyes to the wider world.  Get out of your little neighborhood.

I think we have made strides towards a more just world.  Yet, we argue about how to provide health care for all people.  Have you seen it where a person doesn’t fill their prescription because it cost too much?  Have you know someone who has died because they couldn’t afford going to a hospital to have surgery?  Okay,  I have gone off onto a tangent.  What does all of this have to do with the maids of 1960s Jackson, Mississippi?

These maids (in the book), the help, needed to have a place to tell their story, to give the world a new view of what was going on in houses where everything looked like it was working well.  Behind the scene, these women were abuse, making sacrifices and doing the best they could with the resources that were available.  One maid had to make the decision to risk telling her story so that others would be encouraged  to join in writing their experiences.  Sharing our stories with others help us to understand each other better.

So, my family is going to serve a meal on Friday to the homeless of Bloomington Normal at a place called Safe Harbor.  This is also an overnight shelter.  We may have the opportunity to hear someone’s story, a story of struggle.  May we be understanding and caring as we serve people who experience the world differently.  May God bless us, those who serve and those who receive.

Four or more

So how many books can you really read at one time?  I don’t mean having all the books laid out in front of you and trying to read them at one sitting.  However, I have found myself in the midst of several books this last week.  I am still reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which is a book that you have to read a little then set it down to digest it- there is a pun there.  It is so full of information and if you really understand food and the production of food in the way that Babara Kingsolver is presenting it, you are called to make a change in you life in some form.  For example, I need to eat more fresh food!  Seriously, I rely on processed foods to feed my family more than what is healthy.  It has more to do with convenience and schedules than anything else.

I am also reading Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible, by Liz Curtis Higgs.  This is a great summer study, light and yet insightful.  We have a women’s group that is using this material for their small group study and it is fun to tell the office that I am going to the slightly bad girls group at Westminster Village (a retirment home).

Then book number three was a quick novel entitled, Dear American Airlines.  Thought I could read this one overnight.  The idea behind the book is a letter from a passenger that is stuck in Chicago because the flight is canceled dure to weather.  The letter is more than just asking for a refund but a reflection about the passenger’s past that leads him to be flying to his daughter’s wedding in the first place.

Book four, Unbinding the Gospel by Martha Grace Reese.  I am looking at this for a future study.  In the meantime, Jodi gave me 4 novels to read. Kerri gave me a book to read.  I have three books that I purchased from Border to read and I went to the library this week and checked out three books!  So, when do you say enough.  I love to read.  I would love to have a job when I just read books everyday.  Or maybe, that is part of my job now.

There is life beyond books.  Yeah, I know.  But learning how to read, enjoying reading time, this is good.  My son read a book this week, beginning to end.  I think it was his first book of the summer and school starts tomorrow.

Four books at once is more than enough.

Movement of time

Some people say time moves too fast.  When you have children, you can see the movement of time by the changes in your child.  Maturity comes with time.  Kenny Chesney sings about the wisdom passed on from a man who is 100 years old; don’t blink.  One moment you are a child taking a nap and then next moment your children are grown.  One moment you have a high school girlfriend, the next moment you are sitting by her bedside as she dies.  “Life goes faster than anyone thinks. So we should all love one another, get the most from our lives and enjoy the people we’re here with”.

For other people, time moves very slowly.  Especially when there is the loss of a loved one.  Everyday means living without that person in human form.  Life goes on without that special someone.  This can make time move slowly.  For many children, the school year moves slower than the summer time.   When we are waiting for something or someone, time seems to be one long tick and an even longer tock.

Barbara Kingsolver in the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle spends a year eating only what is grown locally, including what her family grows in their garden.  She writes this book to encourage people to be more aware about what we eat and how food came to be on the plate in front of us.  I read it with ideas that yes, we should change some of our eating habits, but who has the time.  So the question is, what am I spending my time doing?  Right now, I am writing this blog.  Should I be doing something else?  Perhaps canning beans or putting up tomatoes.  So I am thinking about the movement of time and how I can make decisions that will influence whether it moves like a blink of the eye or more slowly as I anticipate what will be harvested from the garden.