America's favorite game of setting up celebrities in order to knock them down has developed a desultory edge in this election year. The increasingly cracked pedestal can barely hold candidates up long enough for satisfying strike and so many people have joined the game that the gutters are full of errant balls. The illusive tenth pin floats in idealized sanctity, a mirage of the candidate who is experienced but has never made a mistake, who can provide solutions to complex national issues in five second sound bites, is highly moral but willing to let everyone do whatever they want, will take care of the poor and disadvantaged without costing anyone anything, can win wars without fighting, will raise the selling price of houses, lower the buying price, and who listens to the people without being swayed by special interest groups. And did I mention money?
The upside is that at least we're shooting the breeze instead of shooting each other; a profound improvement over the way some countries choose their leaders.
"Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed." --Ps. 85:10
The worst part of reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on route to Hawaii, was that by the time I landed, I'd already finished the best of the ten books I brought with me. (Not counting the Bible--of course!) I also immediately wanted to start a literary club wherein people try to convince others to read particular books. (With fights encouraged.) Mary Ann Shaffer's Guernsey Literary etc takes place in post WWII Britain, where a letter begins a writer's exploration of what happened on Guernsey Island while they were occupied by the Germans and cut off from the rest of England. The book's format is letters between the writer, her publisher and the island people. It is utterly engaging, deeply gripping, has a love interest, terrific characters, and a historical view we'd do well not to forget. The book made for the best five hour flight I've ever taken and is currently on various best-seller lists. $24 Hardback. I'm passing this copy around. Get in line.
The only irritating thing about the Potato Peel Pie Society was that the single negative resident on the island was a fundamentalist Christian. Of course. As Philip Zaleski writes in his preface to Best Spiritual Writing 2004, "As for evangelical Christians, it's business as usual: This group continues to receive a steady stream of contempt and scorn from those who certainly should know better." Is it always the brightest and best that stand around yelling "Crucify him?" Why is it that people who carry on ad nauseam about people's rights and respect for other's religions are so quick to assume that any Bible believing Christian is an uptight, bigoted idiot?
"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." -Aldous Huxley
Our two week vacation provided my hereto missing summer-lounge-around-reading fix. We stayed on the North Shore on Oahu and if you're going to lounge around a pool reading, the pool at the Turtle Bay Resort is perfect. Set on a promontory over the ocean you can look up from your book to watch the surfers, while sipping expensive drinks served with chunks of pineapple. If you'd rather be IN the sand and sea that option is also available. We celebrated Michael's birthday at Ola's, a restaurant right on the beach. If you're ever there, order the Kahlua pulled pork "nachos" with plum sauce, goat cheese sour creme drizzle, and asian guacamole. Yum!
A particularly graced series of events made all this lounging in the lap of luxury possible and I am still astonished and grateful. We spent one night in Waikiki, and while it was amusing, I kept wondering why these hordes of people were bumping around the store and shore there, instead of fleeing to the relative serenity of the other side of the island. Maybe it has something to do with the shops, although I found a lovely blue towel with turtles at North Shore. You can come admire it on the grass above Capitola Beach or at Big Sur or Family Camp some sunny afternoon. By the way if you're a golfer, Turtle Bay Resort has lots of holes. I sometimes watched the greens from my lanai, wondering why anyone would be hitting a ball around in the sun when they could sit reading in the shade, caressed by the island breezes...
"Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast." -Peter Drucker
Gerald May's book Pilgrimage Home was a good book to start lounging with. It chronicled the beginnings of the Shalom Institute, which focused on creating Contemplative Prayer Groups. I was intrigued by the trial and error they encountered in setting up these spiritual groups, and the interwoven contemplative prayer slant helped slow down my tightly wound internal clock. "Oh, you mean I can just sit here? Do nothing? Ahh." Of course even contemplative prayer can quickly work itself into a Practice, with Things-To-Overcome, and it can get as silly as anything else. Nonetheless we need to schedule space into our overfilled lives and a contemplative prayer group sounds like one way to do it. You can have Pilgrimage Home for $4. (Unless you're a sponsor, then you can have it for free.)
Another kind of space available is the Illuminated Journaling class I'm starting Wednesday October 15 at 10:15. This 7 week course is for creative explorers who need to carve out time to reflect, plan, doodle, muse. The three October workshops will include: Light from a Deep Well, a look at paradoxes in the creative process; Picture books, telling the truth with story and images; and Patterns that Prevail, habits that provide a foundation for constructive living. The course costs $50. The weekly, hour and half classes will include time to share and time to stare. You can check out the rest of the plan on the Events page at companyofsaints.com. Please register in advance.
''Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.' - Charles Schultz
One thing that I found interesting in Pilgrimage Home was that they teamed up a male and female for Soul Friends and for special meditation times. They discovered this added a whole other dimension to the work. Some of us have been talking about how we miss having men in our same-sex prayer groups at Family Camp. Maybe next year we'll mix it up a bit. Although there's a lot of evangelical writing about the dangers of male/female spiritual intimacy, I've always preferred male Spiritual Directors. Reading about the Shalom Institute discoveries validated my sense that there is a particular spiritual grace which travels within the pull between the opposite sexes. "A very great mystery," as Paul says.
"Faith goes up the stairs that love has made and looks out the windows which hope has opened." - Charles H. Spurgeon
Which reminds me. We just got in a 12 volume set of Spurgeon's sermons. $30.
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, the Angela's Ashes guy, turned out to be pretty good. At first I thought it might spiral down to the grumbling & complaining that marred 'Tis, his second book. Teacher Man started out in a similar tone and I thought, "Oh no, not this again." But after a while he pulled out of self recrimination and into his students. By the end it was quite good. $4
"I like the way I do it better than the way you don't do it." D.L. Moody
A proof copy of Kathleen Norris' Acedia and Me was hiding out in Hawaii. My luggage would be lighter if I'd keep in mind that other people have books, too. Acedia and Me; A Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life is a study of the slogging sense that life is a boring round of inescapable, dreary duties. By her description, acedia is just short of depression. The impressive compilation of monastic and literary writings through the centuries about this Noonday Demon is leavened by Norris' personal stories around the writing life and her husband's depression, illnesses and death. The book rambled a bit, but that might have changed between the proof copy and the final edition. It now is published and retails for $25.95.
Between reading Acedia and Me and Julia Cameron's Finding Water, I got a fairly dismal picture of the life of these best selling Spiritual Writers. In Finding Water, Julia Cameron is consistently on the edge of a nervous breakdown. In Acedia and Me Norris regularly verges on acedia. While I admit that it is easier and more interesting to write about the negative side of things, part of me kept thinking, "With all this wisdom, why don't these guys have it together yet?" Perhaps this is just a reminder that in Spiritual Realms, we are all always beginning again.
"Faith is courage; it is creative while despair is always destructive". -David S. Muzzeound
Meanwhile, now that I've been out stimulating the economy, I don't understand why I keep getting 700 billion offers of credit cards and financial loans by phone and mail every week. I thought those guys were out of money. Obviously everyone who owes money needs to pay off an extra hundred this month. Everyone who doesn't owe money can help a friend pay off an extra bit. And how about a tithe from all those who made a tidy bundle on the housing feeding frenzy or the slick oil prices? If you want to go out and stimulate the economy, feel free to start at The Word Shop.
"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."--Elbert Hubbard
Blessings,
Alliee +