Nancy Nordenson

744. I was younger yesterday

Today I have something fun to tell you about, a blast from the past. A new and ambitious friend, Greta Holt, has started a blog about courage, but not the kind of courage that sends you parachuting off a plane or climbing Mount Everest, although I suppose it could. The courage she's writing about is "mostly the quiet kind," meaning the courage that can fill any ordinary day for her readers. As Greta puts it, this courage is "the listening, helping, working and thinking kind." Greta recently read my first book, Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul, and asked if she could include one of its section as a blog post. Of course I said yes. Please please click through to her blog, "Courage and Humility: Explorations" and read "Math, Wisdom, and White Sand" ("I was Younger Yesterday" was its original title in JT). While you're there, I hope you'll dig into some other posts in her brand new and very thoughtful blog.

~~~

[Photo: taken last fall at an exhibit at the American Swedish Institute here in Minneapolis: "100 Days of Creative Balance" by designer and artist Tia Salmela Keobounpheng. To see many more photos of this exhibit, click through at the link to go to her page at MN Artists.]

~~~

Note: Starting next week, I'll be posting at my new website, where I've recently moved my Markings blog. Subscribers to this blog will receive posts as usual but from that site and through a new subscription provider. Given that I typically post only once a week, I no longer will have a "weekly" vs "as posted" option. Hopefully, all will be seamless to you the reader. Please let me know if you have any problems receiving posts. My thanks to Typepad for 14 years of service.

 

725. Modus operandi of the attentive person

A couple days ago something jumped out at me from an email. The email was from Poets & Writers website/magazine and identified stories of interest to click through and read. The thing that jumped was in the paragraph about the first story, in which Parul Sehgal, senior editor and columnist at the New York Times Book Review, was being interviewed.

Here’s what she said:

"There's something Cezanne said that I think about a lot, something like, 'I know what I am looking at, but what am I seeing?' That's what reviewing feels like to me. It's very much to 're-view,' to see again, to try to see farther and see deeper."

Sehgal was speaking there as a book reviewer, but what she said seems to me a habit for living as an attentive person, regardless of occupation: to try to see and not just look, to try to see farther, to try to see deeper.

You can read the full interview here.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a sign I saw while in Orlando this winter for a work trip. I thought it fitting for a post about paying attention.]

 

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724. The Year of Small Things Done with Great Intention

About 20 years ago – or was it longer? – I took a class taught by a Protestant minister, the father of a good friend, about the devotional classics. We learned about and read from Thomas Kelly (A Testament of Devotion), Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God), Thomas a Kempis (The Imitation of Christ), Saint Augustine (Confessions), John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together), as well as William Law (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).

Law was an English cleric and devotional writer from the 18th century. Based on the book’s title, it sounds oh so heavy, but Law lightened it substantially by crafting his book using fictitious stories following characters named Classicus, Octavius, Miranda, and more as they learn the importance of intention. A much younger “me” wrote the book’s key message on its first page: “We aren’t where we want to be because we never intended to be. Commitment of will.” The lesson of intention delivered by this book resonated with me all those years ago and it resonates with me now. I still have things to learn from it.

The book’s lesson came to me again the last couple of weeks as I read The Year of Small Things: Radical Faith for the Rest of Us, written by Sarah Arthur (who I’ve written about here and here) and Erin F. Wasinger, and published by Brazos Press. The Year of Small Things tells the story of how Sarah and Erin and their husbands intentionally became “communal friends” and together committed themselves to adopt, cumulatively over the course of a year, the twelve spiritual disciplines typically associated with new monasticism, with some adaptations for their young families. They began in August with their covenantal friendship, continued into September with hospitality and October with radical finances. Late fall and winter focused on spiritual habits, possession, holy time, and vows. Spring brought the practices of congregational life, teaching children, and sustaining creation. The start of summer brought self-care and justice.

Not all of us will move to the inner city or live with the homeless or protest unjust laws before city councils. Some of us will do just one of those things; a few of us might do several. But many of us are called to try this radical thing right where we are, facing our current battles and barriers, one day at a time. Mother Teresa is often quoted as saying, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Well, that’s all we’ve got. Small changes, small acts of hospitality, small attempts at solidarity with “the least of these.” This is what our families, with help from some wise friends and our local church, attempted over the course of one year, taking notes as we went. We hope that others, like you, will not only rejoice with us but give it a shot.

Although this gem of a book claims the word “discernment” as its guiding word, I think the stories of these two families could have the word “intention” as the watermark on every page. I was moved by all they intended and how they did what they intended.

Reading the story of the Arthurs and the Wasingers, you may not – or you may – join them in committing to the same spiritual practices, but my guess is at the very least you will close the book, like me, with some response in mind. An idea. An idea that will become an intention that will become an action that might change your life and someone else’s too.

~~~

[Photo: taken of my kitchen window on a very cold morning]

 

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721. On finding the way

I first read To Resist or To Surrender by Paul Tournier, a Swiss physician, decades ago when I was in my late 20s at the recommendation of a friend. The book came to my mind again this past November, and I wrote the title in my journal. I found it long abandoned in a basement bookcase, a coupon for Centrum vitamins, dated November 1984, as an old bookmark in its very marked-up pages.

The book is about how we decide what to do in a given circumstance, particularly when choices are hard or even difficult to identify. It begins by presenting the dilemma of churches in Nazi Germany deciding whether to oppose the regime or to try to coexist with the hope of influencing it in more subtle ways. Tournier then expanded the discussion to show that the question of “resist or surrender” is basic for all points of conflict, whether in times of war between countries or in times of workplace conflict or in battles between parents and child or a husband and wife. Our natural impulse is to frame our choice as between striving to get our way or giving in, but the book is written for those who want to move beyond this impulse of a dichotomous choice when considering life problems that require something more.

Tournier offered two processes that go beyond the limited power of reason when finding our way. The first is the seeking of divine guidance by Bible reading, prayer, and meditation. Unfortunately, God often is silent in response. “We fail to see,” wrote Tournier, “that by our thus asking God questions, even in the reverence of prayer, we are still attempting to remain in charge of our meditation rather than let God direct us.”

The second is the responsive process of personal transformation. Tournier calls this process “an act of God’s grace.”

“At the very time that we are asking questions of God, questions which remain unanswered, he is ever asking other questions which we fail to heed…. Men throw out questions to God which remain unanswered. But they change and find unexpected solutions when they begin to listen to the questions God asks of them, and to answer him.”

Like all books that stand the test of time, this book written in the early 1960s and hiding in my basement has something to say today. Tournier wrote of Job who in the Old Testament did not receive an intellectual reply to his barrage of “Why’s,” but instead he received "an experience of God" and was changed.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a favorite scarf]

 

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720. Excerpts from King's Strength to Love

Many years ago I read Strength to Love, a book of sermons, by Martin Luther King Jr. It was published in 1963 just after the campaign in Birmingham and a couple years before the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. In honor of King on this day, here are some of the passages I copied out.

“The length of life is the inward drive to achieve one’s personal ends and ambitions, an inward concern for one’s own welfare and achievements. The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. The height of life is the upward reach for God.”

And,

“After one has discovered what he is made for, he should surrender all of the power in his being to the achievement of this. He should seek to do it so well that nobody could do it better. He should do it as though God Almighty called him at this particular moment of history for this reason. No one ever makes a great contribution to humanity without this majestic sense of purpose and this dogged determination. No one ever brings his potentiality into actuality without this powerful inner drive.”

And,

“Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. to have dovelike without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.”

And,

“I am thankful that we worship God who is both toughminded and tenderhearted. If God were only toughminded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off heaven “contemplating all” as Tennyson puts it in "The Palace of Art." He would be Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” self-knowing, but not other-loving. But if God were only tenderhearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made. He would be like H. G. Well’s lovable God in “God, the Invisible King” who is strongly desirous of making a good world, but finds himself helpless before the surging powers of evil. God is neither hardhearted or softminded. He is toughminded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it.”

~~~

[Photo: taken yesterday in the sanctuary of my church.]

 

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719. Brian Volck on Attending Others

My friend Brian Volck has a new book out, his third: Attending Others: A Doctor's Education in Bodies and Words (Cascade Books). I finished it early this week and the last few days I’ve been pondering what I want to say about it, trying to boil down one main impression to send you. That’s not an easy task given what a rich and beautiful memoir this is.

Brian is a pediatrician, which means you could read this book for a view into how physicians think and learn. Of course, that wouldn’t be an incorrect approach. Read Attending Others and you’ll discover much about how clinicians make diagnoses and treatment decisions as well as the things they think about before opening the door to meet a new patient – or more interestingly, what they think about after they leave the room. If you’re a physician yourself or an aspiring physician, you will be in the presence of a fine tutor. But read it for that alone and you’ll miss much of what this book offers.

No one is left out of the activity suggested by the book’s main title, regardless of what kind of diploma or post-nominal initials you do or don't have. Attending others is the education written of on these pages. It is the education that develops across 15 chapters, across decades, across a continent and a hemisphere. This book is a journey of the practice of attending others and the hope that emerges from such practice. Even though such attending would look different for each of us depending on who we are and what we do, few of this book's readers will be able to close the book without feeling drawn to look at those around us in a new way.

I copied out six pages of passages from this book and, after looking through them just now, choose these to pass along to you:

"I use my body and senses to diagnose, treat, and reassure. Placing the diaphragm of my stethoscope on the chest of the febrile child, I listen for the rustle of breath, the murmur of a heart. I touch the pads of my fingers to a frightened adolescent’s wrist, taking her pulse. I watch amazed at the ferocity with which a hungry infant nurses at his mother’s breast. I stir with passions that, despite Dr. Osler’s warning, ground my compassion. I am an embodied creature working among other such creatures. It took years to learn that only by nurturing affection for these others can I rightly serve them, much less understand what it means to be healthy."

And,

"They bless me with fierce hope."

~~~

[Photo: taken of a swath from the book cover. Click here to have a look at the whole cover, "Pillar," designed by Tim Lowly, about whom Brian writes in the book.]

 

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714. A Path Revealed: A conversation with Carlen Maddux about finding the way through

This is a picture of a manuscript that I read nearly a year and a half ago, studded by sticky notes nearly too many to count. These sticky notes aren’t there to mark suggested edits but instead they mark places in the text that took my breath away, or places that taught me something I need and want to remember, or scenes that I simply loved, or confessions that triggered sober witness. Written by Carlen Maddux, a friend from my hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, this manuscript is now a book that has been recently published by the fabulous Paraclete Press.

 

A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer's is the story of Carlen and Martha Maddux in the years that followed Martha’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 50. Martha was a public figure in St. Pete, serving for years on the city council, managing multiple local and state political campaigns, and running herself for Florida State legislature.

Carlen, a journalist, takes the reader along his and his wife's path, and while their path is one through Alzheimer’s, the practical wisdom that emerges in their story can be overlaid on any crisis. The practical wisdom is applicable to life in general. Who among hasn’t faced circumstances that we wish were different than they are?

In A Path Revealed, Carlen learns what it means to take God seriously and personally. He learns what it is to lead, particularly to lead a family. He models what it's like to truly love your spouse. Self-help books in which the author has figured out 10 steps to living with [fill in the blank] and proceeds to teach in didactic fashion pale in comparison to this wise and personal journey hard-lived on every page.

Recently, I asked Carlen a few questions about the book, the writing of it, and the path through crisis, and he graciously responded.

This is your first book – why did you decide to write your story for a broad audience?

CM: While trying to develop my story line, I found two strong themes running along parallel rails: 1) Alzheimer’s and its potential for destroying a family; 2) The spiritual odyssey that emerged. I struggled trying to decide which was the organizing theme. Early on, I tapped a couple dozen readers for feedback; half of them didn’t know us.  Each one of them told me that the focus of my story was this spiritual journey. Alzheimer’s was the context, they said. Developing this then as a spiritual odyssey moving through a life-threatening crisis immediately moved our story into an audience broader than one strictly interested in dementia. A clinical psychologist, who was one of my early readers, says this on the front cover: “This book belongs on the nightstand of every family coping with a crisis.”

In the book you wrote that your reporter instinct kicked in after Martha's diagnosis, driving you to try to figure out whether there was any way out of Alzheimer's. As you came to realize there was no way out of that particular diagnosis, what primary question, or questions, took that initial question's place?

CM: It was the most primeval of questions: HELP?!

How was journaling during this time instrumental in helping you find the way through this maze?

CM: I started a journal almost from the day Martha was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She was 50 at the time; I was 52. I didn’t begin writing a journal for “spiritual discipline” reasons. I did it to survive. I had so much information coming at me, and so many questions stirring up inside, that I needed a central clearinghouse. The idea of a journal instinctively arose. I’m glad it did. Soon enough, my thoughts and writings evolved into issues deriving from this spiritual odyssey. I wrote in this journal for a decade, consuming 14 volumes. My last entry was the day my wife moved into her nursing home.   

How did the act of writing the book – even before you had a plan to publish it with Paraclete – help you achieve the wholeness that you referred to in the book's Prologue?

CM: Writing my book almost didn’t happen, I say in the Prologue. The raw material for the book had to be the journal I’d kept, and I initially found it too difficult to open after having closed it five years earlier. Somehow I got past that grinding feeling. As I read and scanned the 14 volumes in no particular order, story fragments began linking together. Not only that, memories of conversations and images were awakened that I’d not written down, helping me to add color and texture to our story. Fourteen years into our journey—about the time I started to write my book—I suddenly realized how far our family had traveled, and from where we’d come.

At the end of the book I open my Epilogue this way: “Only recently has the meaning of my walk with Martha at Gethsemani come clear to me, carved out like a statue in relief by the intervening years.” (A month after her diagnosis, Martha and I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky and climbed up a wooded hill.) I continue: “Our family has stepped over jutting rocks and tangled roots and moved through a wooded darkness speckled with light. We have stumbled onto sunlit clearings and paused at the wonder of it all, lingering with delight before turning back to the path set before us. Yes, ours has been a maddening and frustrating journey, disheartening even. Yet somehow this walk—our walk—has followed a sacred path, pointing our way toward a Presence far greater and more real than any entrapment by a disease.”  

How does the path through your crisis help people who find themselves in their own crisis, whether or not it is related to Alzheimer's?

CM: That’s a question best left to my readers. Based on the feedback I’ve received, though, our odyssey has so many twists and turns, dead ends and fitful starts, and yet a hope and joy emerging from this milieu, that the story seems to connect at levels that are unique to a reader’s particular crisis. How that happens, I’m not really sure. I do know that they feel a certain authenticity with the pain, suffering, and confusion I share, and thus an authenticity with the hope, love, and joy that arose. 

 

~~~

[Photo: taken of the many sticky notes that marked my reading of Carlen's manuscript]

 

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705. The hope of afterward

 

Reading from Joel, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
” I love that “and afterward.” What’s to come, after whatever has been endured is past: a statement of hope. As to a child, now we’ll let the nurse give you your shot, but afterward, on the way home, we’ll stop for ice cream. Or now, dear child, dear husband, dear friend, dear self, all you can do is hunker down and do what you need to do to live, to get through the day, the month, but afterward, when the pressure lifts, and it always does eventually, you will breathe again, you will daydream, you will have a vision of what life can and will be.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a drawing on the outside wall of a nearby building.]

 

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