Looking from both directions

The American Swedish Institute, located here in Minneapolis, held a Grand Opening of its new wing this past weekend. In this Scandinavian-dense city, the ASI has acted for many years as a cultural center for all things Swedish, hosting museum exhibits, dinners, classes, festivals, a gift shop, and so on, in its "Castle" on Park Avenue, which was originally built in 1903 as the mansion of Swedish-American newspaper publisher.

The new wing is new in every way. "Green," sleek, light to the Castle's dark. My husband and I stopped in for the opening just as a group of students from a local grade school were performing a Native American Indian dance in its performance hall, which is an indicator of what else is new. The ASI's vision is expanding to include multicultural programming in recognition of the multicultural reality that is now this metropolitan area, particularly the neighborhood in which the ASI stands

My husband and I found this interesting: By looking at the original Castle from the vantage point of the new wing, you can see and appreciate it from a perspective you never could before when this land was a parking lot. Similarly, the best way to get a full view of the new wing is to stand facing it from a window on the upper floor of the Castle.

Looking back; looking forward. 

Before we left, we drank coffee and split a cardamom roll, sitting in a shady corner on the courtyard, in the space between the old and the new.

A story by Alice Munro

Speaking of seeing with eyes of love (see last post), Alice Munro has a short story in which one of the characters–a writer–does not see with such eyes. In "Material," Hugo, a well-known and lauded writer, publishes a story using as a character a woman who years earlier had lived in the basement of the apartment building in which he and his wife had also lived. In his story, Hugo transforms this woman "into Art"; in real life, he had treated her with ridicule and disregard. His wife, by now his ex-wife, comes across the story in an anthology and sees him for the fraud he is.

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How to see

I’m a fan of the writings of Josef Pieper, a German philosopher who tried his best to convince people with noses to the grindstone after WWII to introduce sabbath-like leisure into their lives. (See a blog post here and here.) In fact, I have an essay coming out in the next issue of Under the Sun (its last print issue) in which Pieper is a key player. His seminal essays are compiled in the book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, but this morning I’m thinking about another slim companion volume, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation.

In this collection of essays, he again begs us to take seriously his call to leisure, “For nothing less is at stake here than the ultimate fulfillment of human existence.” A key component of this brand of leisure is contemplation, which he equates with seeing, meaning having the “spiritual capacty to perceive the visible reality as it truly is.” We can boost that capacity, wrote Pieper, by fasting and abstaining for periods from daily visual noise, and through artistic creation. In the book's last essay he expands the definition of contemplation beyond that of seeing to include also loving,

"Eyes see better when guided by love." 

So the question that arises on this weekday morning with work projects stacked on the desk and writing projects hovering all around is how contemplation--that is, seeing in love--can be woven into a work day, or said another way, into the everyday life of a working person, such that one's gaze is toward reality and guided by love?

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Reading Annie Dillard: Nothing is wasted

I’m of a mindset that nothing is wasted. I believe this. Not prudently, as in “nothing should be wasted,” but confidently, brazenly. Metaphysically. Nothing is. 

Annie Dillard shares a similar view, only she calls it "a crackpot notion," a "little ghost story" she never tires of telling herself:

Imaginative acts--even purely mental combinations, like the thought that a certain cloud resembles a top hat--carry real weight in the universe. A child who makes a pun, or a shepherd who looks at a batch of stars and thinks, 'That part is a throne and that part is a swan,' is doing something which counts in the universe's reckoning of order and decay--which counts just as those mighty explosions and strippings of electrons do inside those selfsame stars. 

This jolly view soothes the Puritan conscience; it gives the artist real work. With his thumb in the dike he is saving the universe. And the best part of it is he need not find a publisher, or a gallery, or a producer, or a symphony orchestra. Thoughts count. A completed novel in the trunk in the attic is an order added to the sum of the universe's order. It remakes its share of undoing. It counteracts the decaying of systems, the breakdown of stars and cultures and molecules, the fraying of forms. It works. (from LIVING BY FICTION)

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For Alie on her high school graduation

Last night I went to a high school graduation party for a lovely young woman who had been in a Wednesday night children’s program at the small church we both used to attend. I was the “leader” for that group of girls, fourth grade or so to sixth. I loved those girls. While she was still in my group, the church imploded. The grief was great and sent us in many directions. If I could do it over I would have stayed in better touch. Last night, there she was, nearly grown up.

Deep in the archives of this blog, there is a post I wrote at that time about helping the girls make a journal of their own by covering an old-fashioned composition book with their choice of scrapbook paper and decorating it with ribbons, stickers, beads, or whatever they liked. I thought of this last night when I saw her.

This morning, a coincidence struck me. Last month I had discovered a stack of unused composition books that were left over from that time, and so I covered one with decorative paper and have been using it since as a writing notebook. In fact, the coincidence came to me after I wrote the above two paragraphs in that very notebook.

I like to think that coincidences are signs of something big moving under the surface, some unifying cords of meaning that we are to attend to, follow, ponder, grab hold of. I like to think that our time together in that group, even as we cut paper and glued ribbons, even though the separation that followed was too long and wide and a matter of regret, planted seeds of attentiveness and faith. I’m going to pray that the lovely high school graduate never stops paying attention to her life, never stops cultivating it with great care, never stops inviting God to help her write her future.

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Coffee shops: they work like a charm

This week The Atlantic reported on a study by Ravi Mehta et al and published in the Journal of Consumer Research, "Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition." The study provides data to support what so many of us already know: coffee shops are the place to go for more than coffee. Based on these data, Mehta and his colleagues link the surge in creativity that is common in coffee shops not to the caffeine but to the moderate noise level. 

From atlantic.com:

"Modest background noise, the scientists explain, creates enough of a distraction to encourage people to think more imaginatively.

The next time you're stumped on a creative challenge, head to a bustling coffee shop, not the library. As the researchers write in their paper, '[I]nstead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one's comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.'"

Just yesterday I took a project to a coffee shop. I'd been feeling stuck on the project and it languished on my to-do list. An hour later I left the shop with pages of notes on what to do next. Coffee shops: they work like a charm. Well worth the price of a cup, and of course, a blueberry scone can't hurt.

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Reading labels

A commercial has been on television lately advertising the perks program of a certain drug, and it compels me to put on my medical writing hat. With every box of this drug that you buy there’s a perk inside that apparently makes the drug worth buying in case you had any doubt about buying it for its ability to alleviate the troubling condition from which you sought relief in the first place. I know the power of perk programs. I recently succumbed to the pull of one for another type of product, a nonpharmaceutical, and admit its effect is to make me choose that product preferentially rather than others in its genre when I run out and need to restock. 

The problem with the commercial’s advertisement of this specific drug’s perk program is that this drug should never be taken for more than 14 days or more often than every four months. Mr. or Ms Consumer should not be going back and back to the drugstore, this time trying for the steak dinner with a purchase, and two weeks later trying for a free spa appointment. If the condition that this drug addresses doesn’t go away in 14 days, you are supposed to stop taking it and see your clinician. Reading the box will tell you this but it’s not what the commercial or even the existence of a perk program implies.

Your clinician and pharmacist should tell you the full story of any drug you’re taking or considering taking; in addition or alternatively, as in all areas of life, you can educate yourself to a large degree. Everything about how and why a drug is supposed to be taken is included in the drug’s product “label” (also called prescribing or product information). It’s not really a label, like one that is glued to a box or bottle, but a multi-page document that details everything about the drug, including its chemical makeup, relevant clinical trial data, dosing instructions, known and potential side effects, and more. (For over-the-counter drugs, the label is not as detailed.) Every word in the label is carefully controlled and must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. As an addendum to the label, there is often a patient medication guide that reiterates what consumers most need to know in easy-to-understand terms. 

Anyone can access these drug labels; you don’t have to be a healthcare professional. Go to this advertising-free site operated  by the National Library of Medicine: DailyMed. Enter the generic or trade name of the drug in question in the search box and go from there.

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