Do you ever feel someone else’s words rattle around in your brain?

I’ve been thinking all week about these words by Richard Gilbert from last week’s post. Richard makes the case, eloquently as always, that the craft of writing may be less important than the spiritual sources of writing, but it has one great advantage: it’s concrete enough to be discussed. Here are his head-rattling words:

Because I don’t know how to help anyone else find, and barely know how to nurture in myself, the place from whence art arises, that wellspring below mere ego that produces work with heart. What to read, where to go, what to do, whom to love? Craft isn’t nearly as important as spirit, but neither one by itself is sufficient. And we can discuss craft, which is the gateway to art.

How to find, and even harder, to discuss, “that wellspring below mere ego that produces work with heart”? Fortunately, I have another friend who is trying to do something like that in her new book Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit: Nourishing the Soul When Life’s Just Too Much. She may not tell you whom to love, but she offers what writing teachers also offer: practices.

I know you will love this interview with Karen, whose love of life bursts from both her smile and her book. Also, check out her website.

Q: Please summarize your book’s main idea and purpose:

A: “Full Cup, Thirsty Spirit” is a book about staying connected to what matters most even when life is busy. I was motivated to write it after crossing the threshold into motherhood and realizing that as my cup was now overflowing with all the good things I had aspired to bring into my life, I also felt an ache from how difficult it was to find time to slow down, listen within, and tend to my inner-life. I noticed that many of my clients and students could relate to this dynamic, and it inspired me to look for creative ways of balancing the demands of life’s busyness with time for genuine self-care.

Q: What did you learn by writing this book?

A: It helped me gain some perspective on my own predicament—to see the humor and to embrace the humility of feeling overwhelmed by life. It also provided a wonderful opportunity to pull together the theories and practices from psychology and various contemplative traditions that I‘ve found most helpful in my professional work. In doing this, I’ve gained greater clarity about what resources I most value, want to share with others, and apply in my own life.

Q: Were you able to “practice what you preached” as you wrote about spiritual practices?

A: This required quite a bit of creativity and flexibility given the scheduling demands of my psychology practice, other professional commitments, and my family life. I think it helped that I felt 100% committed and passionate about writing this book. I had spent many years writing smaller pieces (some of which found their way into the book), but when I finally knew that this book was really going to be birthed, my excitement fueled my ability to write almost anytime and anywhere when I wasn’t engaged in other activities!

Q: How have your readers responded and used your book?

A:  The book is organized around six shifts, which I see as representing the ingredients that are most essential—and often forgotten— in carving out a life that holds meaning, joy, and balance. The shifts are honoring our rhythms, turning within, filling up, fully inhabiting our days, remembering lightness, and embracing difficulty. The first two, in particular, focus on simplifying our lives. It’s been fun to hear from readers and to look at readers’ reviews and see how different shifts speak to different people.  For some readers, the whole idea of slowing down and taking time to be quiet has been hugely important.  For others, it’s been the focus on fully showing up in our day-to-day life and lightening up that has been most helpful.

Q: What connections do you see between spiritual practices and the writing of memoir?

A: I consider writing memoir to be a spiritual practice because I think this type of writing moves us directly into the heart of our human experience and helps us embrace the mysteries of life with a sense of both awe and honesty. Although my book is categorized as “self-help,” I was thrilled to find an editor who allowed me to wear my memoir hat along with my psychology hat, and to weave these threads together in the book. My favorite type of writing is developing tales (which I hope have a bit of thoughtfulness and humor) based on my experiences in everyday life. I would love to continue doing more of this writing!

I can recommend Karen’s book, since I used it in my morning meditation practice during my last weeks of revising my draft. My cup of inspiration and stamina filled as Karen, my gentle, persistent, spiritual guide, helped me find “that wellspring below mere ego that produces work with heart.”

What connections do you see between the two kinds of practices: writing and spiritual? What role does memoir play in your favorite spiritual books? Vice versa? If you want to explore more, see April Yamasaki’s interview on this blog. Please comment below.

Richard Gilbert asks and answers an intriguing question today: What gives memoirists the right to share their stories?

As you read it, I invite you to compare your own experience as a reader and writer and then to comment at the end.

What gives memoirists the right to share their stories?

By Richard Gilbert

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.—James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”

Once someone rejected something I’d written by saying it was “too personal.” This meant, I understood, not that it was too embarrassingly revealing but that it was only of interest to me personally. Not dramatic enough for a mass audience. Boring? Maybe.

Actually the person’s complete phrase was, “Still too personal.” At first the “still” threw me. Still? The #@*$! had never seen it before! Then I saw that what made the terse phrase a long, warm, personal rejection by New York publishing standards was the word “still.” It carried this meaning: it can become publishable by becoming of wider interest. (With more work. Of some kind. Or so I chose to interpret the rejection.)

How do we as writers know that our memoirs and personal essays are at all interesting to anyone else? What gives us the right to send them into the world? I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot. And I’m going to try to answer it even though I feel, deep down, that I can’t. But surely it’s worth trying because some among the legions of memoirists and essayists who are writing about their lives do wonder.

I didn’t myself, not when I started my memoir. I had nary a doubt about my story when I began writing seven years ago. I’m a different writer now, as I polish the book’s sixth version, than when I began. That guy, he took for granted that he had an interesting story to tell. He told a friend, I remember, “It’s the world’s problem if I’m no good. Not mine. Not if I enjoy doing this.” His technique maybe was shaky, but he was chipper and in good voice. Sometimes I really miss him. Had this issue occurred to him, which it wouldn’t—a doubt so foreign then—he’d have thrown out ideas with confidence. Not me. He’d been a successful journalist and book publisher. I’ve had some success publishing memoir and personal essays but have had many pieces rejected, too.

So my insights are tentative. It seems to me a memoir must have intrinsic interest, from drama or from appeal to the intellect. Alas, intrinsic interest is in the eye of the beholder. Second, I guess, the piece of writing must display technical mastery. Again, partly a matter of taste, since a bestseller for a New York trade house likely would have been rejected by an intellectual or academic press that favors complex, nonlinear structures. Third, perhaps, would be a certain depth of inquiry, which comes from perspective on the story as much as anything

These standards obviously are so partial, if not useless, that I seize on essays that explore this “So What?” issue. Most do so glancingly. But Brenda Miller did so incidently yet completely in her wonderful “A Case Against Courage in Creative Nonfiction,” which appeared in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle October/November 2011 edition. Miller emphasizes craft’s role in helping writers turn raw material from their lives into shapely stories whose form protects the writers, delights readers, and transforms experience into art. She writes:

I have great respect and admiration for those writers who are willing to risk something in their work; as we all know, powerful writing must risk something in one way or another. And it can certainly be daunting to speak when silence is so much more comfortable. But I’ve come to see that at some point—some crucial point—we need to shift our allegiance from experience itself, to the artifact we’re making of that experience on the page. To do so, we mustn’t find courage; we must, instead, become keenly interested in metaphor, image, syntax, and structure: all the stuff that comprises form. We are hammering out parallel plot lines, not plumbing the depths of our souls, but as a collateral to that technical work the soul does indeed get tapped and gushes forth.

Miller is writing about using difficult material, but her point about using “perspective to translate experience into artifact” is what I’m talking about: the primacy of craft in transforming material that’s too personal—in my critic’s sense: not widely interesting enough—into a narrative compelling for a general audience.

As I feel myself slipping into abstraction here, I think of what’s meant by writing that’s too “raw.” It may not be so much that there’s too much emotion but that it appears to be unprocessed, as if the writer has not yet learned from her experience. And so, the reader might wonder, what is the wisdom she has come to impart from her drama or trauma? The more reflective writer uses form—words, sentences, paragraphs, space breaks, structure—as well as musing to convey her message. So craft both makes things easier for the reader to absorb and gives him relationships among the essay’s elements, including the relationship between form and content, to ponder. If one’s story plods, maybe there’s too much connecting and extraneous material and not enough artifice and inquiry. The personal writer, in Miller’s words, must find “refuge in literary technique, in form, in metaphor.”

As editor of Bellingham Review, Miller spearheads the selection each year of a winner of the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction from over 400 submissions. “[U]nfortunately,” she writes, “most of these pieces do bore us, most of them announcing themselves as yet another rendition of ‘this happened to me, I’m being brave, please listen.’ This earnestness makes us sigh and turn to the next piece in the stack. We don’t really want to hear what happened to this stranger.” Winners, she says, “usually focus not only upon their content, but on the nature of storytelling itself. They are not ‘trying’ to be brave. They are allowing the essay to be brave for them.”

Praising Sherry Simpson’s concise “Fidelity,” Miller notes that this memoir essay of marital woe opens with a bear. Simpson cuts back and forth in the braided narrative between the bear, which threatens her and her husband during a wilderness canoe trip, and her dissatisfaction with her mate. Miller writes:

I know it can seem a paradox: that writings imbued with qualities of what we recognize as “honest” or “brave” may actually be so strong because they focus away from that material directly. This refocus can be on form, yes, but it can also hone in on details that exist at an oblique slant to the center of the piece, such as that bear. These essays employ what I call “peripheral vision”: turning the gaze to focus on something that seems peripheral to the emotional center or ostensible topic. Instead of facing your “stuff” head on, you turn away from it, zero in on something that has fluttered up on the side, and see what angle it gives you. In this way we sidle up to the real material and actually find new meaning in it—artistic meaning.

So too, for me, the answer to the cruelly succinct “So what?” question is craft. Which is the only answer I can imagine to this “too personal” riddle. Because I don’t know how to help anyone else find, and barely know how to nurture in myself, the place from whence art arises, that wellspring below mere ego that produces work with heart. What to read, where to go, what to do, whom to love? Craft isn’t nearly as important as spirit, but neither one by itself is sufficient. And we can discuss craft, which is the gateway to art.

Or as Miller put it so beautifully, “Through enacting the practiced ritual of writing—writing with verve and focus and skill—we keep ourselves safe, and we keep our stories safe, and we extend this sanctuary to others.”

Richard Gilbert is completing a memoir, writes about memoir at his blog Narrative, (highly recommended for all serious students of the genre) and teaches writing at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. His memoir essays have appeared in Brevity, Chautauqua, Fourth Genre, Memoir (and), Orion, River Teeth, and SNReview.

Ask Richard a question. Be personal!

 

 

 

 

My Great-Grandma Snyder was a widow from March 15, 1924, until her own death forty years later. She reared four children to adulthood and managed a farm and then a house in the town of Lititz until she was no longer able to do so. Then she rotated among her children, living in a spare room and making braided rugs and helping with cooking and childcare when possible.

 

When I was born in 1948, she was already seventy-two years old. She died at age eighty-eight when I was sixteen.

I remember her as a serious woman whose suffering was not hidden on her face, but whose kindness shone through underneath. I remember her most because of this story:

When I was a girl of about 12 years, I used to go to the empty rooms of our huge, rambling, farm house located between Fruitville Pike and Root’s Auction and dig through the treasures stored there—my mother’s 1942-45 Manheim Township high school yearbooks. One day, I found an even greater treasure: my mother’s autograph book.

Do you know what an autograph book looks like? I wish that book had survived, but I can’t locate it today.

From today’s vantage point, autograph books look like an early harbinger of Facebook. The peer-conscious forces were similar: how many autographs can you get in your book? And do you have cool ones from cool people?

As I read the entries in the book, I skimmed over ones that seemed too familiar, sentimental or pious poems. I searched for the ones like this one: “Grandma has a habit of chewing in her sleep. Last night she chewed Grandpa’s whiskers and thought them shredded wheat!” For some reason I found that ditty uproariously funny.

As soon as I stopped laughing, I knew that I wanted my own autograph book. And I wanted to fill up every page with autographs from friends just as clever as my mother’s. Somehow I managed to fulfill the desire to get a new autograph book.

One of the first people I asked to write in it was my great grandmother Emma Brubaker Snyder. She was in her 80’s at the time. I asked, eyes all shiny, if she remembered autograph books. (Aside: I thought an older person would be an excellent catch, because I knew these books had been far more important to her generation then to mine.)

Great Grandma Snyder took my proffered pen and the nearly-new book. I remember noticing the brown spots on her hands as she slowly opened the book and stroked the pages. I remember admiring the intricacy of her old-school, Palmer Method handwriting. After a long pause, she relaxed into a slight smile. I held my breath.

She waited for the ink to dry and then turned the book back to me.

I eagerly scanned my eyes over the page and read these words: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6.

I was mortified.

A bible verse! About a child! I was almost a teenager. It was 1960, not 1860!

My autograph book was ruined.

Of course, I smiled wanly, thanked Great-Grandma as heartily as I could, and left the room so she would not see my disappointment.

That story came back to me as a college president and now as a memoir writer. My perspective on it is entirely different from the one I had then. Now I can see that my Great Grandma gave me a much greater gift than the one I was seeking. Do you have a similar story? Do you know what an autograph book is? What, in your opinion, is the best way to pass along a legacy?

The artifact today is a 1957 Valentine preserved in the scrapbook that starred in Episode One of Show and Tell, the video series that will run in this blog space once or twice a month, depending on the response it gets from viewers like you.

The valentine in the video could use a little more context. One of my great desires in childhood was to be like the other kids and have a TV. This desire was so powerful that I dreamed about it. So looking at a valentine featuring a TV set and sent to me from another little Mennonite girl who was equally (to our way of thinking then) deprived, amuses me now.

On this day of appreciating our friends, let me say again how much I enjoy sharing this space with you where we extract meaning out of our lives. My own life is much the richer because of you. Happy Valentine’s Day!

And if you are up for a really profound Valentine treat for memoir writers and readers, try this one from Lisa Dale Norton: The Love and Hate of Memoir.

Do you have any Valentine artifacts, either physical or metaphysical, to share? A memory perhaps of that big, yet scary, day in elementary school when everyone distributed valentines and counted them up at the end of the day ? Or a first Valentino in your life?

As I intimated in my last post, the response to my Facebook query asking for examples of sayings from parents was amazing. Fifty-seven responses in all, counting multiple entries and conversations about entries.

Then my Facebook friend Linda Hoye posted a Mary Englebreit painting featuring these words: “Sooner or Later, We All Quote Our Mothers.”

I have quoted my mother often. But I am only now becoming aware of how often. Our whole family remembers this aphorism in song: “When we all work together, how happy we’ll be.”

Since it’s taken me a long time to recognize my mother’s words (“Sooner or Later” turns out to be later for most of us), I decided to ask my twenty-something and thirty-something children what they remembered as sayings from me and my husband Stuart.

Most of what they remembered were little expressions we used (“Just in the niche of time,” instead of “nick.” A few Pennsylvania Dutch expressions such as “strublich” and “nixnux.”) But my daughter did remember one aphorism for each of her parents:

About me: “You sometimes said ‘suck the marrow of life’ or something like that that half way grossed me out just a little bit.”

About husband Stuart: “‘Good ingredients = good results.’ (when referring to cooking … I remember him making real mint tea and taking off the bad leaves of the mint while saying this).”

I chuckled to hear that my one aphorism, stolen from Henry David Thoreau, halfway grossed my daughter out just a little bit. Now there’s the very definition of eye-rolling!

Below is the collection remembered from parents collated from Facebook.

Here’s how the conversation got started: “My father said, ‘if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.’ What did you hear?”

1. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. (X2)

2. My mother: We grow too soon old and too late smart.

3. Dad (mom some as well) when something was painful, or life was a challenge–”you just need to/have to rise above it.”

4. My dad had a unique saying that governed his generous approach to business dealings: “The other fellow has to make a living too”.

5. My dad’s favorite line with my youngest sister was “Remember who you are.” Seems a lot more original than what he used on me when I was kid– “If you don’t know what to do, spit in a shoe and tell the teacher it’s half past two.”

6. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

7. “Let’s all sing like the birdies sing, like the birdies sing…..” Sure, he could be wise, but what I really miss is the silliness.

8. My Dad: “If at first you don’t succeed, suck, suck, suck until you do succeed.”

9. You’re burning the candle at both ends again…..

10. My dad (thinking this was hilarious): “If you need anything, call me. I’ll tell you how to do without.”

11. He also said (w/ 3 daughters on the farm and chores like stacking wood): “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.”

12. Dad always said there are two sides to every story, even a stick on the ground.

13. ” Many hands make light work” was a favorite around our house.

14. Just because everyone else does it, doesn’t mean it’s right.

15. Father: “Eat up. There’s more downstairs in a thimble.”

16. And when he wanted his children to get up and work at 5:30 am: “Day is dying in the west.”

17. My father had these crazy Pennsylvania Dutch sayings that had a moral story to them but made no sense in English. You’re prompting me to get my sisters to help me remember and write these sayings down!

18. My grandmother: “If you don’t watch your figure nobody else will either”

19. My mom: “ya can’t have nuthin’!

20. My dad would say: no education is ever wasted. My mom: I have every faith in you!

21. My Grandmother always said “idle hands are the devils workshop” and the only time her hands weren’t working on something was when visitors came by visiting. I may need to reinstate this practice in my own life.

22. How about this, “Life is not a bed of roses,” or its associate: “Live is not a bowl of cherries,” to make us kids realize that life was tough and we’d better not expect an easy time of it.

23. Remember who you are. (X 2)

24. My mom would say “stop looking at life through rose-colored glasses.” My grandmother always just said “stay out of trouble.” My favorite comes from my dad, my here: “Remember, when times are tough, I love you!”

25. First impressions are too important to miss.

26. From my Dad, ” Anybody can be like everybody. It takes character to dare to be different”.

27. My mother always reminds me “Done is better than perfect.” I have to remind myself of this many times a day.

28. From Uncle Buzz: ” either do it right, or don’t do it at all”.

29. How about the song/phrase quoted often by Mother “When we all work together how happy we’ll be, when my work is your work and your work is my work, when we all work together how happy we’ll be.”

30. “Many hands make light work.” My student leaders all know that saying now…spreading aphorisms around the globe!

31. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink.

32. A good name is more valuable than great riches.

33. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.

34. Money: when you get some, save some, spend some, give some away!

35. “Patience is a virtue,
Possess it if you can,
Seldom found in women,
Always found in man. ”
My son recalls hearing his Grandpa Brubacher say this quite often, just a little sexist eh?

36. My husbands favorite comment to poor unsuspecting cashiers who ask how are you? His response: “Every day above ground is a good day.” And every funeral you walk away from is a good funeral.” Yup, the grocery clerks just love that one!

37. Although “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”…”Every dog will have it’s day.” Woof!

38. Of his grandchildren “One word from me….and they do what they like”

39. My dad’s tough love-”I’d feel for you,if I could reach you.”

40. “This too shall pass” and “If those other fools can do it, so can you!”

41. If you don’t have a goose, take the hen. Thank the Lord and say, “Amen.” And quoting from The Little Engine that Could, ” I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”

Notice that some sayings contradict others.

42. Dad said, “Take all you want. Take two.”

43. My mom always said, “If you are not going to do it right, you might as well not do it at all.” But the one I heard most often in my dating years was “After midnight is the Devil’s workshop.”

44. My dad always said, “You got your brains from your mother. I still have mine.”

45. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”

46. Remember who you are.

47. My Granny said: “The further away from home you get the meaner the people get.” Yep. I grew up in the mountain hollers, where families never moved away + ‘strangers’ rarely came.

48. My dad, “you make your bed, you sleep in it.”

49. Dad, in response to my sister’s and my table behavior: “Sing at the table, whistle in the bed, the boogie-man will get you by the hair of your head.” Thanks, Dad; I have panic attacks now every time Mennonites want to sing table grace. *kidding*

50. My dad, after I’d come home from a date in high school: “How’d you make out?” He claims to have no memory of this, which I find very convenient.

51. Ana Lisa’s grandparents had a neighbor who used to fill gaps in conversation with, “It’s like I say that in a way a person never knows.”

52. My dad, “you make your bed, you sleep in it.”

53. On this blustery snow day I am glad to report that I am “snug as a bug in a rug” and that kind neighbors cleared my driveway with a snowblower proving once again that “all good things come to those who wait” and “actions speak louder than words”!A final word on the temp…”cold hands, warm heart”!

54. My grandma said Keep on keeping on.

55-57: Since first reading your post on aphorisms I have become keenly aware and highly entertained to note that half of my speech is in that form! And really with no distinct memory of why or from where.I hadn’t really thought about their non-use as a means of promoting individuality in my children, but rather an attempt to avoid being like my parents (perhaps the same thing). It is an intriguing phenomena, that seeps into our vocabulary unconsciously from all kinds of sources, literature, teachers, media, relatives etc. I think they add a folksy, albeit cliche and yes, sometimes irritating, sense of poetry to our speech using literary devices like metaphors and alliteration. Being a very visually oriented person ( “a picture paints a thousand words”) I am probably drawn to the imagery, heck what is more fun, to be UPSET or to “have a bee in your bonnet” or “your knickers in a knot”? Moral teaching, espousing of virtues and values, and an mental picture all wrapped up in a phrase, quite brilliant really…”every cloud has a silver lining”…but alas, “beauty IS in the eye of the beholder.” Or as they say, “each to their own.” Thanks for the romp, it’s been fun but I better stop myself!!

 

What role do you think these aphorisms play in forming our characters? Do we become who we are because of such shared wisdom or despite it? Chime in below. Will you be more or less inclined to sprinkle your speech with aphorisms after reading these?

Did you cotton to the advice of Ma and Pa in your youth?

Or did you roll your eyes?

One source of memoir in almost every life consists of the aphorisms — the boiled down wisdom or witticism — passed on by previous generations.

The pattern of youth is to disdain these. The pattern of age is to remember.

Often the sayings are appreciated in a new way in older age, but sometimes they are spoken sadly, either out of regret for the smallness of the vision or for the loss of the wise one whose words remain.

I was a young mother in my thirties when my husband and I bought a copy of the Rhodes family cookbook pictured here. That’s a little beyond the eye-rolling stage but before real appreciation for the buried treasure in the legacy of wise or funny words passed down.

One of the features my husband and I enjoyed most about the cookbook, however, were the sayings and poems listed in the front. “Grandpap” Rhodes, the patriarch of a huge clan of Rhodeses, was still living when we got married in 1969 but died a few years later in 1972. I enjoyed visiting with him and recognized the twinkle in his eye. My Grandpa Hess had a twinkle like that.

So we laughed when we read Grandpap Rhodes’ sayings recorded in the cookbook: “Babies are a sure crop — regardless of the weather.”

Sometimes Grandpap talked to himself. When asked why, he said, “I like to talk to a smart man now and then.”

Most of the other sayings in the Rhodes book are about kindness. For example:

“Do all the good you can,

In all the ways you can,

To all the people you can,

Just as long as you can.”

As I make final revisions on my memoir, I am asking the question of how my family, church, and community shaped me. I am remembering aphorisms.

Recently I asked my Facebook friends what they remembered and I got fifty-seven responses. I’ve assembled these in a Word Document, which I will share in a few days, but first I thought I would ask you to reflect on the aphorisms of your life.

What sayings did you hear that have stuck with you? And have you passed these on to your children, if you have them? I believe I might have valued individuality too much and tried to avoid teaching cliches. I think I’ll have to ask my children what if any sayings they remember from home. How about you?

We all know about the value of silence, taking breaks, and breathing deeply.

We know we’re supposed to do these things.

But then we get completely involved in our work.

And we forget.

April Yamasaki, a Mennonite minister from Abbottsford, British Columbia, has written a book to help us remember: Sacred Pauses: Spiritual Practices for Personal Renewal.

I recently interviewed April, someone I met through Twitter and through her comments on this blog. Here are my questions and her answers.

Q:  Tell us what your book is about and what prompted you to write it. What is Sacred Time, and why do people need it?

A: A few years ago, I was going through a very intense time–a dear church member went into hospice care and passed away soon after, my father-in-law had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and died around the same time, my own mother was not well and in need of more care.

I was feeling stretched and stressed out–personally and pastorally–so my husband and I arranged to take a break for a few days away. I went to bed early and slept late, had a leisurely breakfast instead of rushing out the door, wrote in my journal, took long walks, browsed in a favorite book store, ate ice cream, and just enjoyed being refreshed.
That experience made me wonder — instead of waiting for a weekend or for a vacation, what if I could pause and be refreshed by God every day? And I began to think about spiritual disciplines in a new way as spiritual practices, as spiritual pauses that can refresh and renew us. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I came to think of these as sacred pauses.

All of our time is Sacred Time because it’s a gift from God. But sometimes we get so caught up in the busy-ness and pressures of everyday living that we forget–we lose that sense of the Sacred in every day, we lose that sense of larger perspective. That’s why it’s important to take a step back, to pause, to become more grounded, to re-connect with ourselves and with God, with other people and with creation.

Q: What did you discover about yourself as a result of writing this book?

A: I discovered a new depth in the classic practices of Scripture and prayer, and I discovered that I also needed some less typical spiritual practices like making music and having fun. One of the stereotypes of the Christian life is that it is serious, even joy-less, but joy and humour are spiritual qualities. They are gifts from God and can be part of Sacred Time as much as fasting and prayer.

What all these have in common as spiritual practices is their capacity for refreshment and renewal as we allow God to work in us. In writing this book, I also became very aware that sacred pause is part of my creative process. Writing is not only about putting words together. Writing also means pausing–to remember and reflect on past experiences, to pray, to re-read the last chapter before moving on, to go for a walk to clear my head, to sit quietly in the presence of God.

Q: How did you structure your own sacred time as you wrote your book? Was it easy or hard to do this?

A: I’m mainly a morning person and often read my Bible, pray, and journal before breakfast. But I will just as often read a part of Scripture during a random part of the day, talk to God while going for a walk, or journal late at night. I’m not particularly disciplined about particular times, so for me it’s easier to think in terms of sacred pauses woven into my day.

One of the challenges for me is that when I’m working on a project that I love, I become both a morning person and a night person. So some of the book was written in the early hours and late at night, around my regular pastoral ministry and everyday life. That kind of pace is actually easy for me until suddenly it’s not! I need to take care that I don’t flame out somewhere in the middle. I need sacred pause and rest. Thankfully, I also had some sabbatical time for writing, and I’m grateful to my church for their support.
Q: When Mennonites left their rural communities in large numbers and joined the ranks of urban (suburban) professionals, they wanted to bring with them values from their roots. Simplicity was one of these values. In your opinion, has this desire been realized? What practices aid or obstruct this desire?

A: I don’t know that I can speak of Mennonites in general, but in my part of the church I think it’s an ongoing challenge. The obstacles to simplicity are many: the oh-so-present consumer mentality, the real or imagined peer pressure to keep up with others, the always-on world of technology, the sheer number of available choices. It’s not so simple to live simply in suburbia.

In my observation, while people may still want to value simplicity, the definition of simplicity has itself changed. Now a simple family supper might be take-out pizza instead of a homemade soup and a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. And simplicity tends to be defined mainly in an outward, physical sense with little regard for the inner spiritual quality. But the two go together.

Simplicity isn’t only about eating certain kinds of food or owning fewer things. It’s also about setting aside distractions, about being more focused, more intentional about life. I find that silence, prayer, reflection, and other spiritual practices can nurture that kind of simplicity.

April’s book launches February 4, 2013. I love the cover. It reminds me of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, combining a sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing. I’m lucky enough to have a martial artist friend Toni who wishes me a Wabi-Sabi Wednesday on Twitter nearly every week. I thought of her when I saw this book.

That last question above is the reason I invited April to an interview. As I write my own memoir, I am searching for some of the secrets of simplicity that came to me from a Mennonite childhood. I think it’s wonderful that I can find answers to my tenth-generation Swiss-German American heritage quest by sitting in silence with a third-generation Chinese Canadian married to a third-generation Japanese Canadian. I love God’s sense of humor, don’t you?

Do you take spiritual pauses in your life? I loved April’s definition of simplicity: “it’s about setting aside distractions, about being more focused, more intentional about life.” If you have questions about how to do this or want to share you own wisdom about practices that renew, April and I would love to talk with you below.

 

That creative and persistent daughter of mine, Kate, keeps challenging me to do new things.

We were looking at the result of the survey we sent to the people who have signed up (right hand side above) for my e-booklet and weekly emails. They told us that they want to write their stories but that they faced two serious obstacles: not enough time and not sure how to get started.

Kate told me to do a video log (vlog!) to help people overcome these two obstacles. She even suggested the title “Show and Tell.”

As soon as she said those words, she had me hooked. I’ve loved Show and Tell ever since first grade. Wouldn’t it be fun to suggest short, easy, first step based on my own experience as I am finishing my  memoir?

Yes!

Here’s the very first episode of Show and Tell. I want to thank bloggers and memoirists Richard Gilbert and Paulette Bates Alden for helping me rediscover a wonderful online essay about why memoir writers need to shake up the old advice to “Show, Don’t Tell.” In a video I must be brief, but if you want to understand in depth, Paulette is your guide.

And now, without further ado, here’s the video:

 Did you enjoy this first episode? Would you like to see more artifacts and examples? Just leave a brief note with your vote below.

P. S. If you love blooper reels, you might want to take a look at Show and Tell 1.1 and 1.2 on my YouTube Channel. Do it now, because I will erase these in a few days. You can also find videos of my adorable grandson there.

Before Vicky died at age 35, she changed my life.

In 1954, when I was six years old, almost everyone I knew was either a farmer or a Mennonite or both. Then Vicky Martinez blew into my life — all the way from Manhattan! She stayed with us for two weeks.

Vicky was like me. We were both high-spirited girls close to the same age.

But in almost every other way, we were different. Vicky was Catholic. I was Mennonite. Vicky knew about the city. I knew about the country. Vicky had many sisters and one brother older than she. I was the oldest and I had only one brother when we first met.

We played country games such as pinwheels (above) and running through the sprinklers. I was barefoot every chance I got. Vicky liked to keep her shoes on.

Vicky returned every summer to visit us on the farm. She loved our animals, rode on our tractors, enjoyed our growing family (picture above, summer 1960, shows sister Sue holding a puppy and sister Doris trying to catch one in her skirt), and asked me lots of questions about why I was now wearing a prayer covering on my head like my mother.

Most of the children who participated in the Fresh Air Fund that sponsored Vicky’s visit stopped coming to the country after age twelve. The last summer Vicky visited us was in 1961.

After that, all we had was letters. Our mothers corresponded at Christmas and on birthdays.

That’s how we found out that Vicky had developed multiple sclerosis. And that’s how we got this newspaper clipping of Vicky as the poster child for MS, posing with Micky Mantle.

Vicky died on January 10, 1985.

Her father Joseph died in 1987. Her mother Josephine, a remarkable woman we got to know through her letters, died in 2001.

Today would have been Vicky’s 64th birthday. This post is dedicated to her and to her siblings, most of whom also participated in the Fresh Air Program.

When I first started writing childhood memoir, the story of how Vicky changed my life was the first one I wrote and the first one to win a prize and get published. If you want to read the compete essay, “The Fresh Air Girl,” it can be found here. The story will also be included in chapter three of my forthcoming memoir.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I got a letter from Vicky’s youngest sister Irma. She had read the essay above online. We’ve never met in person but have connected online. I hope to see her the next time I visit my mother.

Where does Irma live? Manhattan, where she was born? No. Lancaster County, Penna. I know there’s a story there. Can’t wait to hear it.

Vicky, I wish I had thanked you while you lived for the way you opened up my world. But perhaps it’s not too late. Happy birthday! And thank you!

Is there a “Vicky” in your life? Tell your own story of a person who opened you up to the world below. Be sure to thank him or her while you can!

 

 

Last January 17, with help from my daughter Kate and the good folks at PlumbMedia, I launched the website that houses this blog.

So today, on the exact anniversary of that date, I am pleased to share the summary of the year as WordPress described it for me.

According to blogging guru Derek Halpern there are 164 million blogs currently around the world on the Internet. He thinks most of these blogs get fewer than 1000 visitors per month. This one averages over 4,000/month. Not that I check those stats obsessively.

So it was exciting to get a report that flattered my little blogging ego by comparing my blog to 12 film festivals the size of Cannes! We know better than that, of course, but why not celebrate anyway?! People from 147 countries have stopped by in the last year. I still find the Internet amazing for this reason.

It’s fun to see the top blog posts and the top commenters in the report. Thanks, Richard Gilbert, Tina Barbour, Kathy Pooler, Sonia Marsh, and Linda Gartz. All of these people are excellent writers and bloggers. Please help me thank them by clicking on their names and visiting their fascinating blogs.

One of the surprises of this year is that, in addition to the lists of top memoirs people have always loved in the past, my two-year-old post about our blessings at our daughter’s wedding was the most popular single post. Apparently lots of parents want to bless their children. I’m so glad if our words have helped others find their own.

So cheers!

And thank you, one and all. You are my best teachers.

What do You want from this blog? I really want to know. Which kinds of posts do you like best? Any that irritate you? Or that you could do without?

 

 

 

http://jetpack.me/annual-report/31610455/2012/