Category Archives: Humanities

Neither Rain Nor Sleet Nor Threat of Death

The closest call came when he was stuck in traffic and a group of gunmen walked up to the car in front of him to drag out the driver, kicking and screaming. He watched silently, hoping the gunmen would not take him, too.

“I cried when I got back to the office,” Mr. Mikayel said, pushing his large-lensed glasses farther up his nose.

—Neither War Nor Bombs Stay These Iraq Couriers (New York Times)

Self-Portrait Tuesday: All of Me Week 3

self-portrait tuesday: all of me week 3

We are still exploring the “embrace the mistakes, love the ugly bits” theme. This week I don’t have a deeply personal story or contemplation to share. What you see here is the fruit of my labor: my first ever knitted hat. I am little-girl proud — “Lookie lookie what I made!” I’m pleased to have completed it and equally gratified that it fits. Is the hat a perfect rendition of the pattern I followed? Heck no! Some of my stitches are looser or tighter than need be, and the seam isn’t exactly right. I had to tink a couple of rows. (Tink is knit spelled backwards and means one carefully un-knits a row with a mistake in it. Knitting slang, yeah baby!) Yet I learned much making this (how to read a pattern, how to decrease stitches), and the next hat I make will be better. When I was younger, I used to be afraid to start new things, because I wanted to get it right the first time. The judge in my head was quite adamant that I was only valuable if the outcome of my action was exactly right. What a fallacy that is! I’m glad I learned to move through fear.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

–James Joyce

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

–Ornette Coleman

Just because you made a mistake doesn’t mean you are a mistake.

–Georgette Mosbacher

Small Sips

Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.

–Stephen King, On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft

What Writing Is

Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as what they say; they are maps of intent.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all. The single-sentence paragraph more closely resembles talk than writing, and that’s good. Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?

–Stephen King, On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft

Resting, Dancing

Sometimes I experience God as this Beautiful Nothing,” he said. “And it seems then as though the whole point of life is just to rest in it. To contemplate it and love it and eventually disappear into it. And then other times it’s just the opposite. God feels like a presence that engorges everything. I come out here, and it seems the divine is running rampant. That the marsh, the whole of Creation, is some dance God is doing, and we’re meant to step into it, that’s all.”

–Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

A Drop of Fire, a Million Indentations

Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I’d pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person — a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person’s experiences — a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we’ve ever grown.

–Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

On Manners

There is a law of nature that where moving bodies are in contact with one another, there is friction. And manners are the social lubricating oil that smoothes over friction. One learns to be courteous — it is needed to enable different people who don’t necessarily like each other to work together. Good causes do not excuse bad manners. Bad manners rub people raw; they do leave permanent scars. And good manners make a difference.

–Peter Drucker, Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices

In a similar vein, I have recently learned about a movement called Bellado. Founded on six basic principles — kindness, respect, generosity, forgiveness, honesty, and patience — the goal is to create greater mindfulness and lovingkindness in our daily interactions in order to improve the lives of others and, in doing so, improving our own lives. This life exercise can be done as a family; there are goals adapted for adults and children. Check it out and see.

Makes Me Wish I Were a Kid or a Teacher

If you have a child in school or know of one, you will appreciate the fun of The Flat Stanley Project. It’s awesome. In the author’s words:

More than thirty years ago, I was saying goodnight to my now grown-up sons, J.C. and Tony (Flat Stanley is dedicated to them), and JC stalling for my chat time, asked me not to leave the bedroom. He was scared, he claimed, and when I asked him what he was afraid of he couldn’t think of anything. As I started out again, he had an inspiration. ‘I’m afraid my big bulletin board will fall on me,’ he said. I told him that that was ridiculous; the big board on the wall above his bed had been securely mounted by me, and even if it got loose it would do so so slowly that he wouldn’t even notice it, just go off to sleep, and by the time it rested fully upon him he’d be sound asleep and wouldn’t wake, so the board would just lie there all night. Then I thought of small joke and said: ‘Of course, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll probably be flat.’ Both boys thought that was a hoot and many evenings after that one, we’d make up stories about adventures you could have if you were flat. Best idea I ever had, and I didn’t even know I’d had it. Not for many months, until a friend in the kid-book business, who knew about the flat stories, suggested I make them into a book.

According to the project website, “The Flat Stanley Project is a group of teachers who want to provide students with another reason to write. Students’ written work goes to other places by conventional mail and e-mail. Students make paper Flat Stanleys and begin a journal with him for a few days. Then Flat Stanley and the journal are sent to another school where students there treat Flat Stanley as a guest and complete the journal. Flat Stanley and the journal are then returned to the original sender. Students can plot his travels on maps and share the contents of the journal. Often, a Flat Stanley returns with a pin or postcard from his visit. Some teachers prefer to use e-mail only, and this is noted in the List of Participants.”

My knitting and blogging acquaintance Lain needs people willing to host Flat Stanley for her son’s project. If you’re willing, contact her via email (which is listed on her blog).

On Deeper Acquaintance

One of the chief reasons we have so much anguish and difficulty in facing death is that we ignore the truth of impermanence.

In our minds, changes always equal loss and suffering. And if they come, we try to anesthetize ourselves as far as possible. We assume, stubbornly and unquestioningly, that permanence provides security and impermanence does not. But in fact impermanence is like some of the people we meet in life — difficult and disturbing at first, but on deeper acquaintance far friendlier and less unnerving than we could have imagined.

—Art of Dying Gracefully and the Afterlife

Some Griefs

There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie.

–May Sarton, “Of Grief”

In memory of Nixzmary Brown

There are many many children who die of abuse and neglect. This case in particular has hit home. I think it has to do with fact that the entire family scapegoated her, including her siblings. So tragic.