Evidences of beauty and goodness, anything that prompts joy

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I’ve been slowly rereading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Perhaps you read it when it first came out in 2010. This popular book is known for modeling keeping a daily list of that for which you’re grateful, not meaning just “things” but evidences of beauty and goodness and thought and any sightings that prompt joy no matter how small. The book moves from gratitude to joy, with lots in between and beyond, and this second read has been valuable. This morning as I was reviewing the passages I’ve underlined, this one popped out and offers a clue regarding this newsletter’s first entry so I thought I’d post it here.
 

“Give thanks to keep eyes on heaven.”


Since starting to reread this book I've restarted keeping a gratitude journal. It’s a practice I suggest to you as well particularly during these strange days of uncertainty. Start a numbered list. Each day add 5 or 10 things. Keep it going. For what are you grateful this day? Where have you seen beauty or goodness or had a thought that calms or energizes? How and when have you felt joy?

Their eyes were watching God

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The last several weeks a section from the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Thurston, a classic of black literature, has come to mind a number of times. I cited it long ago in Just Think, and since it’s been revisiting me recently I want to call it your mind here as well. The book is set in Florida in the 1920s, and the quote here is when Janie, the main character, and her husband are taking shelter as a hurricane, the “screaming wind,” is coming through their town.
 

“The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”


Their eyes were watching God. I’ve always loved that line. It begs the question—regardless of who you are or where you live or the color of your skin or what storm is approaching or overhead (Covid perhaps?)—what does it mean be “watching God”? I think this question is key to hope. I’d love to hear your thoughts. What might it mean to be watching God from behind a face mask? From our couches as we watch the news each night sitting in company with others but from whom we’re isolated?

Your Creativity Archive

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I recently read a post on Austin Kleon’s blog, “The Garden Where Ideas Grow,” that I found encouraging and even life-giving. For those of you who don’t know of Kleon, he writes about creativity and is the author of several books, most recently Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad. The blog post spoke of creativity as being like gardening, which rang true for me even though I’m not a gardener, in the literal dig-in-the dirt sense of the word. Each of us has notes for some creative idea planted in a number of places, such as emails or letters, journal pages, new project files, the margins of books, blog posts, and so on, and these seeds don’t go anywhere while they’re in those places. But then—and often rather out of the blue, because you didn’t realize at the time when you wrote these notes or phrases that you were really planting seeds—a moment comes and you’re surprised to see something germinate and push toward the light, and you realize then that all this time that seed had been growing tender roots. I discovered that this week with something I had worked on over 3 years ago.

I had been reading Dancing on the Head of A Pen by Robert Benson, and he wrote about how he writes 600 words every morning related to an emerging project and uses the rest of the day, all of the rest of the day, to work on projects that are further along or market the ones that are already out in the world. As I read it I thought how wonderful and wise, that this is how the work gets done, but the next day as I got ready to start my day job, I felt nearly upset at what I’d read because it so clearly leaves out someone like me, and perhaps you, who has to give so much to other things like earning a living. Then I remembered the little project from 3 years ago, and it clicked together in my brain with the Kleon blog post about creativity being like gardening and the clue from Benson of giving a certain number of words per day to something new, and so now something new is slowly growing and in a fun way, come what may from it.

I mention this because maybe it will cause you to think of something you started once upon a while and to wonder whether roots have yet formed hidden.

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Related posts:

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[Photo: Dusk, the evening after summer solstice, at one of Minneapolis’s beautiful lakes.]

With thanks to Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver, superlative poet and essayist, died this past week at the age of 83. I first started reading her work, particularly her essays, in mid-life when I was in graduate school. Reading her was like having a friend next to me, urging me on to pay attention, to pause, to look, to wonder, to praise. In Long Life: Essays and Other Writing, Oliver wrote:

“And that is just the point: how the world, moist and bountiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning, ‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’"


When I heard that she had died, I took Long Life off my bookshelf and went through, re-reading the lines I’d starred and underlined.


Here are a few of the other lines my eyes landed on:

“What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?”


And this:

“I walk in the world to love it.”


And this:

"And here I build a platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts, and aim high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have a bedrock from which to descend." ( I had wanted to use this as an epigraph for Finding Livelihood but due to permission issue I had to cut it.)


This morning, here in Minneapolis, the sky is blue and sunny, the air cold. New snow, not much, is glistening white. Although the thermometer reads –1°, it is all so beautiful. Oliver wrote, “There is a rumor of total welcome among the frosts of the winter morning. Beauty has its purposes, which, all our lives and at every season, it is our opportunity, and our joy, to divine.”

May you divine much beauty, live the life yours to live, think thoughts and aim high, walk and love. I thank Mary Oliver for writing and sharing her deeply meaningful words. If you have some words of Oliver’s to share, I’d love to read them in the comments.

~

I’m experimenting with providing an audio version of my posts. Let me know what you think!

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To read other posts I’ve written about Mary Oliver, click here.

[Photo: taken of a painting viewed at the Minnesota Museum of American Art: “March Idyll or Winter Landscape, Woodstock” by John Fabian Carlson; used with permission. I love that crack in the sky in the upper left corner that tells you the sun is about to break through. I think Mary Oliver would also have loved it.)

What to think about today

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This past Sunday our minister's sermon was on this text from Philippians, which gives a gentle push to thoughts of a higher order.

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

I needed this reminder and perhaps you do too. These words are a touchstone that serve as not only wise guidance, but permission, yes permission, to at least occasionally turn thoughts away from the evening news, away from fears, away from sorrow, away from grievances, away from social media trivialities, away from [fill in the blank], and toward what is noble and right and pure and lovely and excellent and praiseworthy.

This morning I'm blowing the dust off something I wrote long ago. In Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul, I launched from this verse in Philippians to write a bulleted list of reasons to stock one's mind well. Here are some of the bullets in that list:

  • To be catalyzed, expanded, and ignited. Those of use who have battled a blah spirit and lifeless mind on one or more occasions won't find it difficult to draw a link between the state of our spirit and the state of our mind.

  • To stay optimistic and not lose hope or vibrancy. The world is full of wonderful things.

  • To link reason and imagination. To see the chasm between what is and what could be. To see possibility. To see opportunities for greatness.

  • To know the richness, vastness, and beauty of that which has been divinely created.

  • To form a solid foundation from which to launch action

  • To provide sufficient mental content of beauty and joy so that we are less likely to gravitate toward content of despair or fear.

  • To be equipped for creativity.

It's always OK to be a student of what you've already learned long ago and have needed to learn again and again. May your day be one of joy and hope. The world is full of wonderful things.

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[Photo: taken this week of fall trees and sky.]

Think small to think big

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I rather enjoy abstract questions, giving my mind something big to ponder, but more and more I’ve found that it’s the small concrete questions and observations that are significant and add up to something. The big questions fill in with what's small.

Here’s a wonderful passage from an old book on my shelf: The Art of Clear Thinking by Rudolf Flesch, published in 1951.

“Next time you find yourself wrestling with such a question, stop and translate it into a low-level, concrete question to which you can find an answer. Instead of “What is the meaning of life?” ask yourself “What did I do today, and for what purpose?” Instead of “What knowledge is of most worth?” ask “What did I learn last year and how did I apply it?”
    And when it comes to the question “What is truth?”, remember that our civilization has developed an elaborate procedure to establish the truth about things and events, namely, a court trial. Yet, no witness has ever been asked to answer the question “What is truth?” More likely, he is asked: “Now tell us exactly what you did between 3:30 and 4:30 on the afternoon of August 4, 1947?”

~~~

Related post: Isak Dinesen on two courses of thought

[Photo: taken of some cuttings from a spruce tree in our yard, which have been in a vase in my kitchen for nearly a month and are now showing new spring-green growth fluffing out from the tips. There must be some sort of natural antibiotic in them because the water remains crystal clear.]

Make stuff, learn stuff

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Film director Pete Docter gave something back to the audience in his acceptance speech for Best Animated Feature for Inside Out at the Academy Awards last Sunday. If you haven’t seen Inside Out, it’s a wonderful film about an 11-year-old girl who becomes miserable after a cross-country move.

Here’s what Docter said:

“Anyone out there who’s in junior high, high school, working it out, suffering — there are days you’re going to feel sad. You’re going to feel angry. You’re going to feel scared. That’s nothing you can choose. But you can make stuff. Make films. Draw. Write. It will make a world of difference.”

Adults were listening too.

It reminded me of advice given by Merlyn the magician in King Arthur’s court as told in The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something . That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world ways and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn anatomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

~~~

[Photo: taken from a back car window of the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge.]