What I love about Jonah is that his big plan for Saturday is to go to Burger King on Friday so that he can get a paper crown and walk around the arboretum with his staff as King of the Forest (Gabriel has volunteered to be his trusted guardian). Downing a couple of greasy cheeseburgers is just the cherry on top.
She felt she had no plans, no thoughts; yet at some level, her mind and her body had taken action and catapulted her into this pool of stillness . . . She felt as if she were suspended between two worlds, belonging to neither. —from Astrid & Veronika, by Linda Olsson
I do love how, in my life, the right book comes around at just the very right time (the one mentioned above was given to me by a dear friend). And the books, they are hardly ever big and important, as some might consider such categories. If I were to list a few . . .
The Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter
My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
Assault on Eden: A Memoir, Virginia Stem Owens
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keefe, Laurie Lisle
Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally)
I can’t and wouldn’t say that most of these books make my own favorite-of-all-time list (except maybe Little Tree—o wait, and Kristin Lavransdatter), but each has been vital to me as my person was shifting, recognizing, searching. Those times when life felt/feels too big or too hard or too lonely. When it seems as though I’m moving around, doing what needs to be done, but I’m doing it in a world filled with kinetic sand, up to my shoulders. I can still look around, but there’s a drag to every motion. A way of being in which every action is so very intentional.
Bet you can’t guess I’m in the midst of one of those times now.
I typically respond to my entry into this strange land in an intensely physical way. Let’s say I start weeding my flock of gardenias, azaleas, camellias, and roses. In 100 degree Alabama heat. For a week. Which I follow by multiple trips to Lowes for pine straw (let’s say twenty bales worth), which I spend the Labor Day weekend spreading. In short, I exhaust myself to the point of not being able to move, which is to say,
She sat
still being
and not being afraid
but afraid some
of the same
vast girl talking to
the gardenias.
Thankfully, errands and wilting azaleas and afterschool pick-up (as well as an infected toe) draw me back from the edge. I’ve only fallen in a few times over the course of a life. The important thing is not being so afraid that I deny the darkness is part of who I am.
“Fr. Sophrony, how can I be saved?” Fr. Sophrony offered him a cup of tea and after awhile replied, “Stay on the brink of despair, and when you cannot go on, step back and have a cup of tea.” (Mount Athos, the Sacred Bridge: The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain, Dimitri E. Conomos and Graham Speake)
Or step out into the hot Alabama sun and move the watering hose.
She was thinking about the book, about the continuous process of reshaping and reassembling all her ideas and plans. It was as if the book she had begun in another world, in another life, had been written by someone else. The words no longer had a connection with the person she had become. Here, there were no distractions other than those she carried within, and everything lay exposed. It was time to find new words. —Linda Olsson, Astrid & Veronika
Blue Dog 