The Four Rs

 There are four activities (or perhaps in two cases, non-activities) which I find to be vital for my soul's continuing well-being. And this past few days, I have been indulging in all four of them, to my delight and joy... And for me, they are summed up in this lucky photo of my favourite beach in all the world, Benar Beach, which was taken earlier this year. There is something about the "permanence in motion" (to quote Stephen Donaldson) of sunlit waves which restores my soul. 

Benar Beach in mid-Wales (Sue Woolley)

What are my Four Rs? Rest, Relaxation, Reading, and that well-known honorary R, WRiting. I drove up to spend a few days with a very dear friend on Sunday afternoon, straight after leading worship in Shrewsbury (because that meant I was part way there already). My friend lives in a tiny hamlet in the Lake District and over the past few years, I have fallen into the very pleasant habit of spending a few days in her hospitable company three or four times a year. Both of us enjoy our time together very much.

The shape of my visits is unvarying - we indulge in extensive bouts of the three Cs - Canasta, Crochet and Conversation. As the days pass, I find myself sleeping in later and later, which does me good. And also travel to delightful towns which have good wool shops and bookshops. I will be travelling home with three new books... Bill Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Write to be Published by Nicola Morgan, and Illuminated Alphabets by Patricia Carter, all bought secondhand - wonderful! I've already read the Nicola Morgan book - I knew I recognised the name - I enjoyed her first novel, Mondays are Red, about a teenager with synaethesia - more than twenty years ago.

Reading is the only constant activity in my life. During 2023 so far, I have read 95 books. To be fair, many of those are re-reads, which take less time, but I have also discovered some new joys: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Writing Down the Bones and Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg, Femina by Janina Ramirez, and The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary by Frances Stillman. All delightful, and in some cases, very useful.

How do you restore your soul?

Luminous Moments

"Moons and years pass and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shines through our whole lives." This quote, by Franz Grillparzer, resonates withe me.

Like Archimedes in his bath, these 'Eureka' moments change how we see the world, how we understand it. We might be moving along in our life journey, placidly admiring the landscape, when suddenly, something presents itself to our senses and understanding and... our world has changed. How we live in it has changed. How we perceive it has changed.

And this may be a positive experience, or it may be a negative one, but it is never, ever neutral. Whatever it is, it matters to us sufficiently to change how we live and love and are in the world. These luminous moments come in all shapes and guises. They may come when we are out in nature, and suddenly appreciate its beauty and complexity like never before. Or they may come in conversation with others.

Most of my luminous moments, the moments that have changed my life, have come through reading the words of others.  I consider myself so blessed. Books have been my companions, my teachers, my inspiration, and my guides, as I have journeyed through life to where I am now. Few things give me greater delight than the discovery of a new book that makes me think; that makes me see the world and everything in it in a new light.

In his introduction to Mister God, This is Anna, Vernon Sproxton speaks of Ah! Books, "those which induce a fundamental change in the reader's consciousness. They widen his sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time... Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch tease out, analyse. But in whatever way you handle them, they widen your vision."

Where do you find your luminous moments? What experiences have changed your life?

Small Excitements

This week's quotation, by Friedrich Hölderlin, reads, "There is nothing so little or small, that you cannot get excited about it."

And I absolutely believe that. Small children know the secret, because they have not got the experience of life to be blasé or cynical about the world. The way that the frost turns the leaves all sparkly, the sound of a loved one's footsteps coming up the path, a visit to somewhere new... all these are sources of excitement for them. Everything, no matter how "little or small" has the potential to be greeted with cries and wriggles of excitement.

As we get older, we seem to become more world-weary. We've seen it all before... meh, whatever. And I think that is so sad. So I try to put myself into a small child's mindset, when something new happens, and appreciate it with all of me.

Yesterday was a good example. I started a new cross-stitch project. There are few things in life which give me so much quiet pleasure as unpacking a new kit - examining the glowing colours of the silks, having a good look at the chart, and being thrilled by the notion that over the next few weeks or months, these disparate elements - silks, material and needle, will be coming together to create something new and beautiful.

And then giving it away to the person I've stitched it for. Most of my stitching these days is for other people, in the shape of wedding and anniversary and birth samplers. It gives me great joy to create something original for the people I love.

Reading can be another source of small excitements. I've recently discovered The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, and the books (eight of them) are beautifully written. Every few pages, I will come across a sentence, or a passage, which is so perfect, I want to share it with someone. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson have the same effect, as does J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The magic of well-written words, to transport the reader to a new world - this is a small excitement which will never pall.

What little thing makes you excited? Look around your life and see...

Feeding the Passions

When Gordon Campbell's book, 'Bible: the story of the King James Version' was published to mark the quatercentenary of the KJV in 2010, I can remember looking at the hardback wistfully in Blackwells, and then remembering that I didn't buy hardbacks any more, and that I'd wait for the paperback.

And then, of course, I forgot all about it. Until I ran across it again a couple of weeks ago, and bought it on impulse. Yesterday evening, I finally got around to starting it.

There was the usual thrill of starting any new book that only fellow reading addicts will understand - the excitement of turning to the first page and starting to read, knowing that by the time you finish it, you will not be the same person you were when you started. But this was something special. Reading it feeds two passions of mine - the old enchantment around rare books and the history of printing and publishing that goes back to my Library School days, and a growing fascination with the Bible, in terms of both content and history.

I know that most people will think I am decidedly odd for getting so excited about reading an academic book. But I'm happy. Back in a few days. Bliss!

Such A Perfect Day

This morning, a friend of mine posted about the elements of her personal perfect day: "Being around like minded people where we just get each other; being inspired; walking in nature; yummy food (normally not my own); seeing my son happy; feeling that I may be making a small difference in the world."

Naturally, this made me reflect about what my perfect day might include ... I found myself very much in agreement with her. All the elements that would make up my perfect day seems to be linked together, which is why the symbol of the Celtic triquetra speaks to me so powerfully.

I too love to be around like-minded people, and feeling in tune with them, but also enjoy being in open and deep conversation with folk who have different views to mine. Which includes Unitarians (of course), and other people of all faiths and none.

I find many things inspiring - words, images, people. I count myself very blessed to be living in the early 21st century, when social media such as Facebook can bring such words and images into my home. Not to mention books, my beloved books ... it would not be a perfect day if I did not spend at least some of it curled up with a good book.

Being creative also makes me happy - whether it is writing, or colouring, or stitching. So creating something new and original would also have a part in my perfect day.

Walking in nature is always an important element of any day, and my perfect day would not be complete without it. I am so very lucky to live in a small village on the edge of Salcey Forest, so walking in nature is a simple matter of walking out of my own front door, and turning right. Last week we were in Wales on holiday and had the added joys of the sea and the mountains. Bliss.

Yummy food, especially when shared with those I love, is a special good in my life. As I write, it is the morning of Father's Day, and my daughter and my husband are sitting in the kitchen, preparing and talking about food. And like my friend, I am much happier (and more appreciative) when somebody else has prepared and cooked it!

Seeing the people I love happy is a key component of my own happiness. I cannot be truly happy if somebody I care about is miserable, for any reason. I just can't. I am finding that as I get older, my circle of compassion is widening, which makes me increasingly restless about other people's unhappiness.

Which is why feeling that I may be making a small difference in the world also has a role to play in my mythical perfect day. There is so much to do, and each one of us is so small and insignificant, but "Still I Am One".

Finally, at the end of the day, giving thanks for all these things, and for life in all its marvellous, messy, chaotic, imperfection, just being grateful for my life, joys and sorrows together, would make a perfect close.

What would your perfect day look like?

 

Broadening the Heart

It is said that reading broadens the mind, and that is good and true. But there are a few special books (probably different ones for each person) that broaden the heart. I have blogged about this on here before, and what I said then still rings true for me: "Few things give me greater delight than the discovery of a new book that makes me think; that makes me see the world and everything in it in a new light."

And it's happened again this week. At our Ministerial Fellowship conference, folk bring books to sell, in aid of the Ministerial Students' Fund. And I picked up Wishful Thinking: a Seeker's ABC by American writer and Christian theologian, Frederick Buechner. I picked it up because American writers and friends whom I respect had quoted him, and I had liked these quotations.

But I wasn't expecting to discover another Ah! Book, one that has the power to fundamentally change how I see the world. And this has. It is an alphabetical listing of short pieces on a wide variety of religious and spiritual topics. Often an entry is just a few sentences. Take the one on Anger, for example, on page 2:

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

I read it, and the way that I see the world changes. And that is such a gift. And I am so very grateful.

A Good Read

I am very grateful to my friend Jane for sharing a post by Kester Brewin, which appeared in Huffington Post UK, about reading as a spiritual practice. The paragraph that particularly caught my attention read:

some of my good reads - the bookshelf is horizontal; the photo is not!

"To read widely, and often, is thus to hope to be changed, to still believe that change is possible. It is never, ever a waste of time. Be it an essay or short story or novel or article, a good read never goes unanswered, because a good read opens up a world that requires our attention. That might be the inner world of the self, it might be the domestic world of a family relationship, or it could be the plight of a whole people."

"A good read opens up a world that requires our attention." Yes. I think that this is so true. A good read can change your life, whether it is how you see yourself, how you relate to other people or other living beings, or the rest of creation, or it might galvanise you into action. I have posted before on this blog about "Ah! Books", which fundamentally change your way of thinking. Ship of Thought in March 2012. I wrote then:

"Yet few things give me greater delight than the discovery of a new book that makes me think; that makes me see the world and everything in it in a new light. In his introduction to Mister God, This is Anna, Vernon Sproxton speaks of Ah! Books, "those which induce a fundamental change in the reader's consciousness. They widen his sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time. ... Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch, tease out, analyse. But in whatever way you handle them, they widen your vision. For they are essentially Idea-creating, in the sense that Coleridge meant when he described the Idea as containing future thought - as opposed to the Epigram which encapsulates past thought. Ah! Books give the impression that you are opening a new account, not closing an old one down."

And there are new Ah! Books, new good reads, to be discovered all the time, which makes it such a joyous process. Recent discoveries of mine include Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth, Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott and An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. And the poetry of Ellen Bass. Each of these books has made my life richer, more complex, and I am grateful.

I hope that the process of change and development will continue indefinitely, as long as there are new good books to read.

The Taste of Words

When I was a student, I had a poster on the wall of my room, which showed a bookworm, eating its way through a pile of books, with the quotation by Francis Bacon: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."


 

image: fromsmilerwithlove.com



 

I have always loved that quotation, because it describes so exactly what I do. When I have a new book to read, particularly if it is the latest instalment in a series, I devour it, avid to discover what happens. I sit and read and read and read, and don't stop until I've finished. Then I go back for a more leisurely second reading, savouring the words, rolling them round in the mouth of my mind, and enjoying them more deeply. I know some people who never read a book twice, and I simply cannot understand this. For me, the best books are to be read and enjoyed, over and over, until they become a part of me, "chewed and digested". They are food for thought, and some are food for my soul.

I have only recently noticed that I often think about reading in terms of taste - I will read some words and think that they are delicious. And all the words I used about reading in the previous paragraph are taste-related. Which is odd, since reading is done with the eyes, not the tongue or the teeth. Perhaps it is the internalising process that I go through when I find a book that I love - it becomes a part of me, and that is a fully sensory process, involving sight and taste and even smell (the smell of a new book is one of my favourite smells!) so that the book becomes part of my heart and mind forever.

Food for thought, and food for the soul, that is the taste of words. And I count myself blessed, that reading and books are such a huge and important part of my life.


A ship of thought

I have found a beautiful quotation by 19th century American Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, which sums up how I feel about books and reading:

Theodore Parker

"The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

Reading has always been a passion of mine, to the extent that it has occasionally got me into trouble, when I have been too deeply buried in a good book to pay attention to life going on around me. Yet few things give me greater delight than the discovery of a new book that makes me think; that makes me see the world and everything in it in a new light. In his introduction to Mister God, This is Anna, Vernon Sproxton speaks of Ah! Books, "those which induce a fundamental change in the reader's consciousness. They widen his sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time. ... Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch, tease out, analyse. But in whatever way you handle them, they widen your vision. For they are essentially Idea-creating, in the sense that Coleridge meant when he described the Idea as containing future thought - as opposed to the Epigram which encapsulates past thought. Ah! Books give the impression that you are opening a new account, not closing an old one down."

Everyone will have different Ah! Books. Mine include Beliefs of a Unitarian by Alfred Hall; Quaker Advices and Queries; Enough by John Naish; Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain; Rilke's Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke; The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong; The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic and Mary-Ann Brussat and A Backdoor to Heaven by Rabbi Lionel Blue. And of course Mister God, This Is Anna. Each of these books has shown me the world in a different way, and made me think about myself in relation to it. They have influenced what I believe, and how I behave in very fundamental ways.

What are yours?