I gave the second assignment
for November, and this is what I asked myself and my siblings to write about:
Think back over the
last year, and write about something you have either read, listened to or
watched that has made a tremendous impact on your life. Share about it,
and why it impacted your life. The link
to Bill’s assignment is here, and the link to Christy’s assignment is here.
Nudging Toward a
Remake
As I was driving to the airport to pick up my daughter Zoe this fall, I perused my audio books I had on my Kindle to listen to something I wanted to listen to while driving to Spokane. I came across a book called Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Neiquist.
On the Amazon website,
here are a few words that describe this book:
In these pages, New York Times bestselling
author Shauna Niequist invites you to consider the landscape of your own life,
and what it might look like to leave behind the pressure to be perfect and
begin the life-changing practice of simply being present, in the middle of the
mess and the ordinariness of life.
Written in Shauna's
warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most
important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind
busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to
be. Present Over Perfect is
a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform
faster, push harder, and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting
image of perfection.
Shauna
offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey, and a
compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in grace, rest,
silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people that matter most to
us.
From the forward by
Brene Brown as she said, “Present Over
Perfect is an open-armed invitation to welcome the people we love, and even
ourselves, back into our lives. It’s not
an easy call, but Shauna is at the door and she knows exactly how to make us
feel at home,” to the beautiful poem by Mary Oliver titled Wild Geese, tears
streamed down my face as I listened to the words of this book that struck a
chord with me. A chord that is telling
me that my soul is sick and needs nourishment.
A chord that is telling me to focus on the important things, and to clearly
identify what those important things are in my life. A chord that wants my life to be honest and
real. (When people are honest and real, that can make things a bit messy. I need to realize that messiness is
good. Messiness I okay. Because, whether we like to admit it or not,
we are all, at times, a big, hot mess.) A chord that wants to be present in
people’s lives, not perfect.
Here is the poem Wild
Geese, by Mary Oliver, that does a wonderful job of setting the tone
for the rest of the book.
Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver
You do not have to be
good.
You do not have to
walk on your knees
for a hundred miles
through the desert repenting.
You only have to let
the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair,
yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world
goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and
the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the
landscapes
over he prairies and
the deep trees,
the mountains and the
rivers.
Meanwhile the wild
geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home
again.
Whoever you are, no
matter how lonely,
the world offers
itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the
wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over
announcing your place
in the family of
things.
As Niequist starts
telling her story, she shares about an email exchange with one of her mentors. At one point, her mentor emails her back and
says, “Stop. Right now.
Remake your life from the inside out.”
|
|
This is where I am at in
my life. I need to remake my life from
the inside out. What does this
mean? I think that is part of the
process. This book was a catalyst to get
me thinking about this change. There
have been other little things in the last few months. A new women’s meeting at my church. A student poetry reading at the high
school. A sermon on Sunday focusing on
capturing the wonder the shepherds must have felt when the were told of the
baby lying in a manger, and then finding the baby. A personal Bible study on learning about
Agape love. A reading in the Advent
devotional Paul and I have been reading that tells the story of the prodigal
son, and explains more about the cultural ramifications the father went through
when his son asked for his share of the land, and then he sold the land off
before his father’s death, and then how great a love the father showed when the
son returned home.
A little nudge here. A little nudge there. Now it is time to start seeing, to start
listening, to start experiencing a change in life. Find ways to nourish my soul. Find ways to be real. Find ways to accept the messy. Find ways to connect.
Niequest quotes Thomas
Merton in one of her final chapters. He
says, “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by
realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
I want to know who I am
at the deepest level. Somewhere along the way I have lost who I truly am. As I move into 2019, I want to journey toward
the deepest level of who I am. I want
this to be a journey of love. A journey
of finding my way back home.
The book began with Mary
Oliver’s poem Wild Geese.
The book ended with
another of Mary Oliver’s poems, The Journey.
I think sharing this
poem is a very fitting way to end this post as well.
The Journey
By Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and
began,
though the voices around
you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to
do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild
night,
and the road full of
fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices
behind,
the stars began to burn through
the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new
voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and
deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could
do—
determined to save
the only life you could
save.
No comments:
Post a Comment