Category Archives: recommendations

Good News

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1. For a long time, I’ve resented how newspapers and the news media in general are fueled by the thirst for negative, sensational stories.  There are so many good stories out there, but somehow that’s not exciting enough to sell, so we get fed negative stories. Why would one PAY to read bad news? This is a perpetual mystery to me. Of course there are terrible, twisted, heartbreaking things that happen, but that’s not the only reality.

That’s why I love Humans of New York.  Brandon Stanton lost his job, hit the streets with his camera and took hundreds of photos of people, asked them simple questions, and posted their photos and short dialogues on his blog. Last Christmas, the book came out: HONY, and overnight it became a New York Times best-seller. Someday I want a copy too.

I like HONY because it’s positive and real. There are heartbreaks and loss, but there is unabashed joy and creativity and trembling life and darling children (“today in microfashion.”) Everyone in the world has a story, and every night this blog celebrates some ordinary person’s story. Seems lots of other people like it too. It has created a kind of supporting, cheering community around the globe. It makes me happy that some good, ordinary stories  are making it big because one man notices things that others just walk past.

2.  In 48 hrs, God willing, I plan to be flying across the Atlantic. Yay, yay! It’s been a year since I’ve been there, which isn’t so long, but it will be wonderful. Even the airports in America smell different than in Europe.  Yesterday a friend asked what I’m most looking forward to. The answer is easy: “Spiritual fellowship and speaking English.” And the access to good books. I want to inhale good books, and have visions of coming back with suitcases full of only books.

But I will also miss the snow in Poland, my friends and their hugs, the pickles, and the little old ladies wrapped in fur hats and long fur coats. Sarah, Plain and Tall was right: there is always something to miss, no matter where you are.”

(related post here)

To My Friend with SAD

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To my friend with SAD, I care so much about how you’re feeling. I know how it is to be wrapped in gray fuzz, to feel that nights are never long enough to get enough sleep, to be afraid that someone will bump you and spill out all the acid inside you. I know irrational tears and impossible fears. This winter, for whatever amazing, incredible reasons, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)  hasn’t come to visit me, but I know what you’re feeling. I get it. And I would like to help you, how ever bumbling and unprofessional my care is.

If we lived in the same town, I would want to invite you to my place. If you didn’t want to come, I’d go to your house and make you some coffee or tea and listen to you if you want to talk. If you wanted to be quiet, that would be ok, and I would hand you some tissues, and ask if you want to journal. While you journal, I would journal too, or doodle, or read stories to your children. I’d make you some more coffee, but not more than one more cup, and fix you an egg or yogurt (protein instead of carbs) and then invite you to go on a walk with me.

We would put layers and layers on–leggings, socks, fleece jacket, scarf, hat, coat, boots, and gloves, then go outside. If it’s raining, we’d use umbrellas. We would walk and walk for at least 40 minutes, talking only when you want to.

Back inside, we would talk about what we want to create. A new recipe for supper? Something abstract in acrylics or pastels? Plant bulbs or repot seedlings? A new centerpiece on the table? A collaborative poem about our walk? A photo collage of your last holiday? It has to be something new and something you care about. Something that has never seen the light of day before.

Then I’d hold you and pray over you and go home. I would be confident that God is up to something good in your darkness, and that you won’t always feel this gray.

After a day or two, I’d call you again, and ask how you are, and as tactfully as I could (which is really hard for me because I tend to lecture), ask if you took a walk that day, and what you had for breakfast. I’d ask God to pour His grace into your day, and tell you to call me anytime you need to talk.

This is what I would want to do. Would that help? What is it that you need, and that your friends could do for you? You’re not alone, and maybe this comment section could be a safe place  for you and others with SAD to be heard and cared for?

The Most Incredible Story I’ve Ever Read

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I seem to live in expansive statements and superlatives. They make me happy but the sane people around me know that my statements reveal how many details I forget.

“This is the best salad I’ve ever had.” Because right now I’m so hungry and the table is set so prettily I forget all the other salads that have been wonderful.

“Did you ever see a cuter child?” Because at the moment these twinkly eyes and squishy cheeks are the only ones that exist.

So I know this is a pattern of my words, and it’s not always wise and I probably shouldn’t always use so many superlatives.

Even so, I want to say that Island of the World by Michael O’Brien is the most moving book I’ve ever read. Really. Honestly. It doesn’t feel right to call it a novel because it’s so real. The character followed me around town and at work. I would talk with my English students and his words and ethos were in the room with us. Does that sound spooky? It’s a powerful book. The most powerful story I’ve read. Ever.

It is set in Croatia in wars and ethnic cleansing of the 80’s. Since I live in Poland, I enjoyed the Croatian words and names that are similar to Polish. Josip is the main character, and it follows his life from boyhood to death.

It could be comparable to Les Miserables with its epic scope and its grace-filled, super-strong main character. It’s never fluffy or trite or sentimental. It’s not an easy read and it takes a certain level of emotional stability to absorb it. Many times I had to put it down and close my eyes and breathe “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” There were several pages I couldn’t read because there was too much sadness and blood. There were pages where I cried and cried, and later still felt all choked up. (I cry fairly easily but not over books!)

And yet. There was incredible strength of character that invited me back to witness redemption. There was peace and joy on a deep, supernatural level that was more real than any thing peripheral. Now that I’m finished, I find myself wandering around, not being able to settle down with any book. Everything else is pale and insipid.

Isn’t it a basic truth that we are brought to prayer only by passing through suffering? In this respect, the war was a blessing because it taught this generation how to pray, and it taught us the power of prayer. We learned that it was prayer that preserved us through impossible odds and only prayer that brought us independence. Dare I write these words–O God, how dare I write them?–yet I cannot be silent. The war was a catastrophe, but in Christ the worst catastrophe can be transformed into a blessing. –Josip, in a letter to Slavica

 

 

Comforts While Drinking Hot Chocolate

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1. I’m in the middle of Island of the World by the talented Michael O’Brien. It’s a deep, riveting story. I’m always amazed when a novelist makes his character write. I noticed and was fascinated by that skill first a long time ago when I read Emily of New Moon. And now in this book, when it has a fragment of the main character’s notebook, it takes me aback because O’Brien has to write doubly, and write in another kind of personae. I think a novelist like him must have an enormous soul. Other snippets of another of his books are here and here.

It is called the “chambered nautilus.” Nature’s powers are so endlessly ingenious that one must take care not to assume one knows where its outermost (and innermost) frontiers are located. –from Josip’s notebook

2. Pinterest is to me like a cozy blanket at the end of the day. A bit of humor, comfort, inspiration. Not every night, but almost, I treat myself to checking what came into my feed that day. There are women who  sneer at it, and others who deal with depression and envy because of it. That’s not Pinterest’s fault. For me, it’s a tool and a breath of new air that gives me ideas. I control the boards I follow and  when one has too much sarcasm or home dec or fussy hand-made cards, I unfollow it. (Yes, how did that word become a verb?)

I cannot put into words how it soothes  my soul to do something with my hands. During and after a season of dark depression, when most everything else in my life was unpredictable and uncontrollable, (or isn’t that all of life?) my fingers did something with paint or pen or paper or an onion, and the medium did what I asked it to, and the result lightened me as nothing else can. It wasn’t about controlling the medium; it was about finding and creating something that hadn’t existed before and having a little more beauty in the world as a result.

Beauty has many layers. Life is, it seems, about unwrapping those layers.

Thomas Merton Quotes

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These are quotes from Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. I enjoyed the book immensely. Merton writes with a candor and self-deprecation that is winsome and inviting. I disagree with a great deal of what he says, particularly about the saints and Mary and the cloistered life. But his life story is worth reading and it took me in as soon as I read about his artist parents. I wish I could have been one of his literature students.

The quotes here are just a smattering of his wise words, but which spoke to me especially now. You know how that is? When a book just meets you and speaks your language? This is one of those.

When the Spirit of God finds a soul in which He can work, He uses that soul for any number of purposes: opens out before its eyes a hundred new directions, multiplying its works and its opportunities for the apostolate almost beyond belief and certainly far beyond the ordinary strength of a human being.

Sometimes I would be preoccupied with problems that seemed to be difficult and seemed to be great, and yet when it was all over the answers that I worked out did not seem to matter much anyway, because all the while, beyond my range of vision and comprehension, God had silently and imperceptibly worked the whole thing out for me and had presented me with the solution. To say it better, He had worked the solution into the very tissue of my own life and substance and existence by the wise incomprehensible weaving of His providence.

Tigers’ Shining Eyes

Posted in recommendations, teaching English by

1. I have this group of pre-teens and in the teachers’ room we call them our tiger class. Last Thurs. they completely wore me out with their mischief and naughtiness, and I was quite numb for several hours after the lesson and felt like a colossal failure.

But yesterday they had completely transformed. They focused on their work and came up with amazing things. Their eyes sparkled with energy and intelligence. They acted out and guessed vocabulary with hilarity and creativity. Crazy whirling arms to show a helicopter’s blades, and fierce fangs to show Dracula.   I sat at the side of the room and laughed and laughed with them. Had they transformed, or had I? Maybe both. I only know I fell in love again, with all six of them.  Their shining eyes completely charm me. And they are still tigers because they’re so beautiful and alive.

2. Speaking of shining eyes, I recommend musician and motivational speaker Benjamin Zander’s speech at TED here. I’m not musical enough to follow some of the technical chord progressions he explains. But in general he’s talking about music and passion and I interpret what he says from a teacher’s standpoint. His bounding energy and way of thinking outside the box makes me feel that no problem is insurmountable.

“I have a definition of success. For me, it’s very simple. It’s not about wealth and fame and power. It’s about how many shining eyes I have around me.” –Benjamin Zander

 

Two Good Stories

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1. This is a book recommendation for the next time you’re at the library: The Soloist, by Steve Lopez, a journalist for the LA Times. It’s about the redemption and power in friendship and music. It’s a true story, and happened in LA.  You can watch the movie, and it’s good, but the book is really worth your time and thought. It was born out of Mr. Lopez’s search for a story for his column, and how he bumped into Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless musical genius. There’s more than one unlikely hero in the story, and maybe that’s part of why I like it.

2. I live in a flat that has 4,000 English books on its walls. This is in a town where the average adult doesn’t speak English, so this flat is exceptionally exceptional. About once a year our landlord hires a lady to dust all the books. This morning she came, a pleasant, patient lady.  We chatted a little bit now and then. My Polish is slow and childish, but functional. She said this is a happy place, and I agreed and said I feel like a princess in it.

At one point in her work, she peered into the room to ask me what the date is today. I glanced at the calendar to make sure and said it’s the 95th. The cleaning lady, God bless her, never flinched or smirked. Then I heard what I’d said, and quickly cancelled it and stumbled out the correct number and explained that numbers are so hard for me. (Never mind that I learned them in the first week of Polish classes three years ago; I still stutter out most numbers higher than 11.) The most amazing part of this story is how graceful the woman was, and how she listened calmly and patiently til I finished what I wanted to say. I guess if you have the patience to carefully dust 4,000 books, you can also wait for the foreign girl to sputter out and self-correct her Polish mistakes.

Shari’s Giveaway

Posted in My Book, recommendations by

Hey! If you want another chance at winning a copy of  my book, breeze on over to Shari’s blog.

While you’re there, have a look around. My sister commented to me once: “Do you read Shari’s blog? She writes every day but she’s never boring!”

It’s true. She’s a brilliant writer, and I’m proud to know the lady behind the blog.

Hurry over there asap.

A Treasure Worth Simplifying For

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There are 3 emphases that I think are necessary for engaging well in God’s Kingdom. There’s another kingdom out there that vies for our allegiance, and we can tell which one we belong to by the things we love.

The next few posts will be about ways to look at what we treasure.

Simplify. We, the 20% of the world use 80% of the world’s resources. This thuds deep into me and I cringe at our mindlessness and sense of entitlement. Even so, I like my comfort and routine and ease. We all do. It’s human.  For example, please don’t think about taking away my morning coffee comfort. Don’t talk to me about 25,000 people starving every day while we Westerners go on diets to look better and fit into our clothes.

It’s possible to live with less stuff. It’s entirely possible to be gloriously happy without the latest home-deco your neighbor has. It’s possible to live well without shopping at Walmart or even thrift stores every week or getting a manicure every month. It’s possible to have a wonderful life with only three sweaters to choose from in your closet.  You can feed guests tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches and still have a fantastic evening together.  We don’t need all the extras we think we do. Amy Carmichael idealized living with as many things that could fit into a hobo’s handkerchief. I think she was on to something and it’s why I hated hauling a 50+ lb. suitcase from pillar to post when I was on furlough.

For a push toward simplifying, I suggest reading Jen Hatmaker’s book called “7, An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess”. It’s her account of when she simplified 7 parts of her life for 7 months as a discipline and way to assess her life. She’s crazy and disorganized and funny, and her book makes you think that if she can do that, you can cut out something in your world too.  After my aunt read the book, she decided to not go to the grocery store for one month but eat what they already had in their pantry and freezer. Bravo!

Tomorrow: Sacrifice

Why Pray?

Posted in recommendations, singleness by

 … I keep thinking about this thing of praying for marriage & children for myself.  I had never thought of doing it before. I have prayed about “if I get married sometime…” but not asking for it. I have a aunt, a lovely lady and never married. Her life has impacted many many people, including mine, in ways she couldn’t have if she had her own family to care for. Do I pray for a husband for her?? God doesn’t plan for all ladies to get married, does He? I am interested in the marriages of my friends! I just wondered about how you said we should pray to get married..?

A girl e-mailed this when she read my last post. I asked her permission to share her question, so now you can look over our shoulders to read part of our correspondence. My answer to her was a little wordier than I intended, but well, that sort of happens sometimes.

–Thanks for writing and bringing up some excellent questions! There are several reasons I suggested praying for marriage for friends and ourselves. I’ll try to explain them here:

  1. For emotional honesty. If we feel lonely and ‘left behind’ there’s no virtue in becoming defiant and try to convince ourselves that we can do life just fine on our own and don’t need a man. God knows how our hearts work better than we do; He already knows how we feel. We may as well be honest with ourselves about it since we’re not letting Him in on anyth
  2. Good things happen to our hearts when we come to God with an open hand.  In coming to Him in honesty, it’s not about getting what we want, but about encountering God, hearing His voice and seeing His face toward us.  THIS is the intimacy we were created for, and this is what changes our lives and GIVES us life. HE is the one our hearts are most hungry for.

Living with an open hand is part of what makes a woman beautiful. She isn’t shaking an angry, clenched fist, nor refusing what God wants to give her.  She’s accepting whatever He chooses to put in or take out of her hand. She reflects Jesus in the garden when He came to His father with honesty of what He really wanted, but still surrendered to His higher will. (Notice that His Father never scolded Him for His honesty. He won’t scold us for it either.)

Does God plan for some women to stay single? Maybe. Maybe not. Our lives absorb the consequences for our own decisions and those of others as well as circumstances outside of our control. The best thing is that God is bigger than whatever consequences we live with, and does amazing, wonderful things with wherever we find ourselves.

My understanding is that marriage is our design, but not the ultimate of life. In addition to my observations and experience, these are some of the writers who have influenced me to come to the conclusion that it’s good to ask God for marriage:

Sharon Yoder, author of To Have and To Hold

The bloggers at fast. pray. Their subtitle is: We’re asking God to move and bring about marriage for those who desire it. We’re praying for God embolden men to be leaders: in churches, homes, and relationships. We are also asking that the Holy Spirit would be working in the hearts of women to soften their hearts and transform them into the image of Christ.

I’d be glad for more feedback if you feel like writing!