Two books, two ways to read and write

Do you ever enjoy and care about characters in a book of fiction that when the book ends you want to follow them further, to know what happens in the rest of their life? I do too.

Ken Follett has a solution, at least for me. In his recent fictional history World Without End he did it again. He made the personalities and the lives of the characters in the book so memorable that I wanted to follow their lives further. This historical fiction takes place in the middle 1300s in the English town of Kingsbridge. The monks and nuns own the cathedral. The earls own their serfs. Power and hierarchy seem to invade everyone’s lives. Freedom as we know it does not yet exist.

In World Without End the question, “What happens after they barely survived through that situation?” is answered again and again. Instead of one book, this volume is more like seven books in one. We follow the lives of some of the characters from children through to old age. The story and history keeps evolving.

The only negative for me about Follett’s World Without End is that is more than 1000 pages in length and even in paperback it is a heavy book. I found that resting the book on my lap on top of a throw pillow from the couch helped keep the book high enough to read without having to hold it up on my own.

The other way to read a good book of course is to read it a second time. That is what I plan to do with Barbara Brown Taylor’s most recent book, An Altar in the World. It is my Lenten luncheon reading discipline. As a Lenten “discipline” I get off easy with this one because Taylor writes so well. I keep finding pages or paragraphs that I want to share with specific other people. I know that when I finish this book that I will want to read it again so that I can enjoy and be stimulated by her thoughts and descriptions of how we live our lives and where God is as we live in our pain, suffering, beautiful landscapes and seascapes, and in our friends, relatives, and strangers. I don’t expect to wait until next Lent to pick up this book again and read it.

My book for lunch during Lent

I'm reading An Altar in the World at lunch time during Lent. I used to enjoy being stretched by the author of this volume Barbara Brown Taylor's books of sermons. I have even read good sermons during Sunday Eucharist when the preacher has been less than interesting. With An Altar in the World I have the delight of reading Taylor's thoughts about finding God in everyday places and events. Oh, yes. There is so many encounters of God each day that I can recognize when I am renewed in my perceptions as this author probes me to see.

Here is a little kernel from page 91 that she elaborates with meaningfulness, "The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed."

Nearly Spring outside, nearly Winter in the economy

Spring will come. The economy will recover.
One or both of those is correct.
I'm hoping for both. It's like we are just entering the winter time of the financial crisis. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Some old financial trees and bushes are not going to survive, others will be harmed and will need pruning, but we hope that the "winter," though record breaking, won't be too severe.

Meditating while exercising?

Active meditation is a new term to me. I viewed a report on it last night on one of our few favorite, regular TV shows, “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” on PBS. (The half-hour show airs at a strange time so we record it for convenient viewing later.) I have always known about the practice of meditation, attempting to sit quietly and emptying my mind in order to reach inside and to God for centering my soul. But I have not known about active meditation. The news report that I viewed described active meditation to be present in even, or especially in, very vigorous physical activities such as kung fu. The report described, as I understand it, active meditation as a method of emptying one’s mind, to live in the moment without thoughts about anytime or anyplace other than where one is at that very moment.

Previously, when I have been jogging or other moving exercise in the mornings or at the gym I have been disappointed that I have been unable to meditate at the same time. Now I see that focusing on the immediate action that I am doing is a form of meditation that empties my mind of all of the extraneous diversions that my mind is encumbered with during its normal multi-tasking activity, including the mundane task of keeping track of time. This “meditating during vigorous physical exercise” is a form of centering. I’m not quite ready to see it as “centering prayer” because there is not yet the perceived connection to the Other in my activity. However, this gives me a new way to contemplate what meditation is and what I am doing when I am engrossed in a specific exercise. Perhaps I gain some “credit” for meditating when I am actively involved in vigorous physical exercise.

Lenten Practices work better than New Years resolutions

I think that I have an idea about why New Years resolutions don’t work for me. There hasn’t been time before New Years to plan, evaluate, and anticipate the resolutions.

The penitential season of Lent begins in about one month. For several days now I have been contemplating what Lenten practices would improve my life, my spiritual life, my faith life, my physical life. What book will I read for Lent? What activities will I pick up for Lent that will improve my relationship with Life and those who are traveling with me in this life?

Yesterday I was thinking about how the house never really gets the deep cleaning that it needs. It used to “spring cleaning” but that doesn’t happen in my spring times. What if I were to add just a little bit to my usual housecleaning routine during Lent? Could I deep clean the living room one week, the bathroom the next week, the kitchen the next week, and onward for just the weeks of Lent? (Oh! The basement? The garage?)

I do not know yet whether the deep cleaning of the house will be added to my Lenten practice. I don’t have to decide yet. A month before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, I have the gift of time to contemplate what activities and actions would be best for me and my whole being, my faith, my spiritual self, and my relations with others and the environment this Lenten season. New Years resolutions come directly at the end of Advent and most of the Christmas Season when there is not time in my life to mull and contemplate resolutions that may improve my personal life. Lent works better for me than New Years for trying again to improve the actions in my life.

For a few years I have been writing a letter weekly to my teenage granddaughter. I think that probably most teenagers need all of the emotional and spiritual help that they can get. I write. She does not reply, but I know that she reads the letters. Here is an excerpt from this week’s letter.

We really need to keep track of our past so that it informs our decisions today using are goals and plans for tomorrow so that we process our way through our lives. I think that works for grandfathers as well as teenage granddaughters. So, what do I do with thoughts about how my life would have been different had I joined the military instead of pushing on toward my college degree, or if I had married the first woman that I loved? I try to remember that life would have been different. I try to remember why I made the decisions that I did and in making those decisions what I learned about living my life today. At the same time I look forward to the future and put into practice some actions that will help me whatever the future brings. I live today so that if it is to be my last day, that I was doing the things today that I think are important to be doing today while fully expecting to be living with the consequences of today’s actions in the future.

The pathway through life is seldom clear, but we do the best that we can as we try to find the pathway. I’ve been carrying a backpack in my life that at times seemed like a struggle but I’ve grown used to carrying it and it does not seem like a struggle now. The pathway forward in my life is still unclear, but I can see the path along which I have come and that gives me courage that I can continue through the murkiness of the future.

The marriage decision

For a few years I have been writing a letter weekly to my teenage granddaughter. I think that probably most teenagers need all of the emotional and spiritual help that they can get. I write. She does not reply, but I know that she reads the letters. Here is an excerpt from last week’s letter concerning her plans to marry Douglas.

You know the set of questions that I have offered to you at each of your last couple of birthdays? (You can expect the questions to come again in a couple of weeks with this next birthday.) It looks like it is time for another set of questions that you need to answer for yourself (and nobody else needs to know) about you and marriage.

This is not about Douglas (though he too should have a list of questions that he needs to answer), it is about you only V.

1) Will marriage bring you more or less happiness?

• How?
• In what specific ways? List more than one, more than five.

2) Will marriage bring you more or less security?

• Financial security?
• Physical security?
• Emotional security?

3) Are you willing to give up looking at, flirting with other hot men?
4) How long do you expect this marriage to last?

• Are you intending to not ever give up on it “until death do you part?”
• Or do you see it as a marriage “as long as it works for us?”
• Or “as long as it works for me?”

5) What are the boundaries, the limits, that you would refuse to allow to happen and still keep the marriage?

• If Douglas has affairs with other women?
• With men?
• If Douglas gets violent with you, beats you, causes you physical harm?
• If Douglas contracts cancer next year and loses half of his weight, and his job, and you have to work enough jobs to keep you both alive?
• HIV/AIDS
• You find a guy that is rich, hot, handsome, who wants you?

6) What freedoms are you giving up when you marry Douglas?

• Your mornings alone, or evenings alone?
• Friends that you like but that you know that Douglas does not like?
• The schooling, education, college, that you hope to have for yourself?

7) What is it about you that Douglas finds so good that he wants you all to himself?
8) What parts of you is Douglas allowing you to share with others?

• Emotional (Will Douglas be “okay with” you going to a friends residence and crying about a huge disappointment in your life like the death of a loved one or a hurt that Douglas caused you?)
• Physical (can you kiss another man as a friend?)
• Financial (a friend wants to borrow $200 from you)

V, have you read into any of this that I disapprove of you marrying Douglas? I hope that you have not thought that. The decision for you to marry Douglas is completely, 100%, your decision. (And Douglas gets the same right, 100% his decision). I have tried to tell other people that I love, at other times in my life, that the person they were intending to marry was not right for them, or that that person was right for them. Through the “school of hard knocks” I’ve learned that I can not predict what will be a good marriage and what won’t be. I love you a lot and I want you to be safe and happy. If this marriage does that, then I will be very pleased. If this marriage harms you more than you have already been harmed by your short childhood, then I will be very unhappy and worried. But that is me. You certainly should not decide to marry or not to marry so that grandpa will be happy! That’s another very wrong reason to either marry or not marry.