The Virgin Suicides

Haunting and brilliant.

This book was beautifully written. It is a depressing subject but such a page-turner. I could not put it down. 

Since my "coming of age" was also around this time, it made it that much more intriguing (and I went to Detroit for the first time this year). 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

That Jeffrey Eugenides has made something magical and rare out of subject matter on the one hand so sensational—a quintet of suicides all in the same family, all in the same year—and so banal—coming of age in a suburb of Detroit in the 1970s (complete with soundtrack by Jim Croce, Bread, Carole King, and their contemporaries)—is a source of lasting wonder. The story is told by a collective narrator, a “we” who speaks for a group of boys who, as adolescents, are besotted with the mystifying Lisbon sisters, and, as adults, have remained transfixed by memories of the girls’ mysterious lives and unfortunate ends. Summoning a voice that embodies with expressive exactitude a quality of growing up that has slipped through the sentences of most novels concerned with it, Eugenides captures its nature as a communal experience with breathtaking, heartbreaking sympathy.

Carrying the Fire (1000 Books to Read)

I loved this book. My dad's company was one fo the contractors for the space program. So, this look at NASA in the 1960s was delightful. 

Collins is an amazing writer too. Loved it!

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Jul 31, 2018

An unrivaled account of the greatest adventure of our time—perhaps of all time—told by one of its protagonists, Carrying the Fire remains too little known. Collins was a member of the three-man crew of Apollo 11 on the first lunar landing mission, in July 1969; while his colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the moon’s surface, Collins remained aboard the command module, circling in space and preparing for the critical re-docking maneuvers. Alert to the anxieties and apprehensions of both astronauts and engineers, Collins tellingly communicates the human drama of the historic flight even as he commemorates the heroic dimensions of a feat of physical, technological, and personal daring that the vagaries of modern wonder still keep us from aptly honoring. A man on the moon—imagine that!

Germinal (1000 Books to Read)

I watched a movie about Zola many years ago because I watched all the Oscar winners. The film about his life won in 1938. I have always wanted to read a book by him, so I was delighted to see it on Mustich's list.

The guy can write. It is depressing. Why are French novels often so depressing? 

The cry of the poor is the theme. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Aug 9, 2018

You don’t write a cycle of twenty novels unless you’re an uncommonly ambitious writer. And Émile Zola, the engineer of literary naturalism in nineteenth-century France, was nothing if not ambitious. He wanted to capture in prose the entirety of French society—rich and poor, urban and rural—under the Second Empire. The outstanding novel of Zola’s cycle is Germinal, a gritty portrayal of a coal miners’ strike in northern France in the 1860s. Germinal, with its unsparing look at lives and labors of the working class, is an exceptionally gripping novel. In the darkness of the coal pits it illuminates signal battles of the coming age: between labor and capital, between nature and industry, and between the promise of socialism and the hazards of its practice. The author’s contemporaries certainly bore witness to its impact: When Zola died in Paris in 1902, crowds followed his coffin as a parade carried it to the Montmartre cemetery. As the cortège passed, they shouted one word: “Germinal!”

Wednesday Morning 22 Freewrite

Spiritual Direction Training

I cannot believe how much peace I feel after sharing my concerns with my coworkers. YAY!

This morning, I supervised someone I have been supervising for the last two years. SUCH GROWTH. The first supervision I did with her two years ago involved this directee, and it is amazing to see how much the directee has grown and the director has grown. I love what I do!

I realize that I need to let go of who they think should take my place as I step out of one of my jobs. I think I have someone in mind, and if they ask me, I will tell them. She would be perfect. Oh, that reminds me, I need to tell the other group that I work with that the person who I did a letter of recommendation for would be perfect. I responded within four minutes that I had no reservations, but they had more questions.

Is she going to stay in the "Spiritual Direction Lane"? I had to chuckle for many reasons. Is there a "Spiritual Direction Lane"? I am still chuckling at it because the question is more, "Will they stay in how we define the "Spiritual Direction Lane"?  

It is all so amusing since one of the things I did when I was supervising this person was to help her feel free to follow the Spirit's leading. It is about a lane that the Holy Spirit makes. 

Yes, I understand people not teaching, preaching, prophesying, but even one of the people I go to (when my regular spiritual directors would have a conflict of interest, i.e. she would definitely know who I am talking about if I were to bring up an issue for supervision/direction) says, "Carol, I am going to take off this hat and put another hat on and say......"  And then they go on to say something that isn't very "Spiritual Direction Lane Like." 

No worries though. This person stays in their lane pretty well. So, I can still recommend them without reservation as one of their directors. She is a peach.

So on to my "Slowing September." I am 18 days in, and it is going so much better than my stressful August. I have something coming up that might be stressful because the person I am working with is pretty high on the control scale, but I have known them for probably 15 years, and I can let go of their controlling tendencies and not expect much. I will add "color" to the work rather than try to run it. I give them the right to control away. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but I think they have to learn long-term that they are doing what they do out of their need for significance.

I can just love. I will love. Love and let go. That is what I am being led to do.

So, today is my second time with the 19th Annotation people of the Spiritual Exercises. I am "postponing my dream no longer"! The dream is now. I have dreamed of leading groups through the Exercises. I have loved doing it one on one for the past four years, but my dream was to have groups. I don't think I could do more than two groups a year, but I hope this develops into something. If it doesn't, I will certainly understand, but I want to just enjoy this process and learn. They are a pretty special group of four. I love each one so much. They are going to be such gifted spiritual directors! 

Yippee. Siri says there are seven minutes left.

Oh, Portland is going to have a Women's NBA team in 2026! Can you believe it? I cannot believe it. Wow! That was such a shock to get that email. 

The day is overcast so far, but the sun is supposed to come out in the afternoon. I have two more hours until I am with this group. I am eager to learn. Eager to grow as a group leader of fantastic people. 

Tomorrow, what is on my plate? I think it might be totally free. It is so weird what a more free week I have had compared to last week! The Sustainable Faith training with Marty and Sandy was exhausting. Then I had a new directee over after that. It was so rewarding and good, but for the future, I think it is best not to schedule anything after fourteen hours of training future spiritual directors!

So, I am also going to see John and Katherine in 9 days. We will leave at 1 pm and drive to Monterey, either stopping halfway and driving the rest of the time in the morning or driving straight through. We will spend the weekend with them and leave on Monday to go to Mt. Herman for a retreat for the OMS. That is another decision I made that I feel really good about. After this retreat, I will become inactive with the OMS. It is a closed door for me right now. I feel like even if the door opened after the retreat, it is not the time to walk through it, I need to focus more on my local community and the training and supervising of spiritual directors. That is just what I want to do, Lord. That is the "what I came here for" kind of thing. 

Bring the people, Lord. I have no desire to advertise or recruit. Just bring the people. Speak to them directly. 

Journey to the Heart: Centering Prayer for Children

I loved this book. I am looking forward to my library getting it so I don't have to buy it. I watched someone reading it to me on YouTube. :) 

(This is another book for my Spiritual Accompaniment of Children Course.) 

What is My Song?

It is a sweet story. I like their other books better, especially Sleeping with Bread. 

Let Your Life Speak

I loved this book. I have read so many quotes by this guy. It was about listening to your life to see your vocation.

This is a lot of what I do in spiritual direction - creating an environment of discernment where people see from their life where God is directing them.

It is so readable. Loved it. 

Tuesday Twenty Two Freewrite

I have ceased doing my regular "Morning Pages" and am journaling my thoughts in my Kindle Scribe for my time in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. So, I am back to Freewrites semi-regularly (we'll see). I do like just journaling with my typing fingers. 

Yes, I am doing the Spiritual Exercises again. I love them, and I never tire of being reminded of God's great love for me throughout my "Blessed History."

Another reason I am doing them again is that I was given the wonderful opportunity to lead two groups of spiritual directors in their second year of training (and one already through her training but friends with one of them in the group - turns out she was in one of my Enneagram trainings a few years ago, and I did a typing interview with her - or maybe she already knew she was a Type Three, and I did a deeper dive into growing out of your shadow self) through the Spiritual Exercises. So, I have one group that meets two Wednesday afternoons a month until May. Delightful group. This morning I meditated on Isaiah 43:1-7. So rich and lovely. I will start the other one in February and run for twelve weeks. 

I like not having the "rush" of the morning that required me to journal for up to 40 minutes first thing. Then I went to my meditation and prayer. It was too much. Too much but really beneficial for that season. It has been an impetus for expressing feelings I would normally edit. (I don't say suppress because I am very aware that those negative feelings are looming back there sometimes, but I also have these wonderful feelings of love, joy, peace, etc. that are more predominant. So, naturally, I edit out the negative ones because I like those other ones more.)

I'm doing really well. Really, really well.

Part of my consolation of yesterday was being able to be brave enough to tell my "boss" about one of the things that I do that this will be my last year. It was such a good conversation! It also led to some of the stress that I was feeling over someone who was put in the group I lead. It was a very healthy conversation, and I feel like my load is shared. I am not alone - God is with me, but my coworkers are with me too. Reminds me of the time I went to my boss at OSU and told him about how one of the faculty members was being verbally abusive, and he came to my next class to "have my back"! I will always appreciate that, and I don't regret saying something. Also, when one of the patrons at a health club that I worked with was doing the same thing, I told my boss (and another participant wrote a complaint to my boss about how this person was treating me), and my boss found out that that patron had been doing it to several people. 

(That was also the case with that faculty member. He eventually had to have surgery for an injury and retired early! That was a relief for all concerned.)

So, I was CONSOLED after about six weeks of desolation regarding the situation I found myself in. I have wanted to quit so many times, but I think it is a way for me to not be a people-pleaser. Growth for this 65 year old woman! 

So, today is my 55th birthday in the Lord! I came to Christ at Green Oaks Boys (yes - the first time they ever let girls come) Ranch in Vista, California. It is great to go through my Blessed History and remember seeing Jesus beckoning me to come to him and me springing up out of my chair and going forward at the same time my other friends at the ranch also sprang up (and we had not even talked about it). I wonder where all those girls are now. Maybe after this, I will look on Facebook to see if I can find them.

Today is overcast. I went for a long walk, but I think I will stay inside the rest of the day until my class at 5 pm. I am on Lesson Four today, 1/3rd of the way through. It has been fun, but I sure will have a lot more time once it is over. I knew that it was going to be busy this fall with the OMS Retreat (I am becoming inactive with the OMS after this - I just don't have the time to devote myself to getting involved anymore.)  I also have the teaching at Northwest Hills, but I have a feeling it is going to be the person we are team teaching with who runs the show. He cannot help himself. So, George and I will just add color to his show. 

I have 3:30 left on the timer. I don't know what else to write other than...OH...

Another consolation of yesterday was one of my directees. I loaned her Living Fearless last Wednesday, and she sent me a picture of the book and a card where she had written all the things she had heard with an exclamation at how wonderful it had been!

That made my heart sing: GENERATIVITY is the word that keeps coming to me. I love to pass along to people things that help them grow. 

So, I think the timer is just about ready to go off. I am going back to my reading and maybe even working on the curriculum guide for the Body and Soul Companion Spiritual Direction Training! YAHOO!

TTFN. 

Sailing Alone Around the Room (1000 Books to Read)

Some of these poems made me laugh out loud! Most were delightful. Poems are not meant to be overanalyzed and just enjoyed. 

These are the ones I liked (some are linked):

Walking Across the Atlantic

Books 

Introduction to Poetry

The Dead

The History Teacher (my favorite)

First Reader

Nostalgia (this link has the author reading it to a laughing audience)
Consolation 

"Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera

eager to eat the world one monument at a time?" 

Osso Buco

Directions

Tuesday, June 4, 1991

The Blues

Strauss

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"

Marginalia

Lines Lost Among Trees

The Death of the Hat

Sonnet

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Jul 31, 2018

Billy Collins is a very funny guy, and there aren’t too many former Poet Laureates of whom that can be said. Be his subject poetry workshops or forgetfulness, saxophones or cows, canceling a vacation or nursing a hangover, Collins shapes his poems with a gentle but incisive humor that is ingratiating, intelligent, and, with delightful regularity, inspired. In his work the immediate genius of a stand-up comic is allied with the slow intelligence—the layering of life, learning, and lyrical intuition—of an accomplished poet, so that the reader is transported over the edge of understanding and, for a moment, suspended in the freedom of an imaginative leap.

The Sheltering Sky (1000 Books to Read)

Excellent writing. Depressing story. 

From the Introduction by Tobias Wolff:

The Sheltering Sky has been called nightmarish. That description lets us off the hook too easily because it implies a fear of the unreal. The power of this novel lies precisely in the reality of what it makes us recognize: the seductive voice in each of us that promises freedom through refusing responsibility.

So true. The whole time I was thinking, "Why is he doing that? Why is she doing that?" But they were both listening to the seductive voice. Chilling and yes, nightmarish!

The title comes from this quote:

This one also mentions it:

The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to respose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose. (p. 185)

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Jul 28, 2018

The Sheltering Sky is the story of a New York married couple, Port and Kit Moresby, who bear some resemblance to Bowles and his brilliant, troubled wife, Jane, whose long physical and mental decline would occupy the author for years. Traveling in the Sahara with a friend, hoping the journey will impart some emotional momentum to their inert relationship, the Moresbys fall further and further away from each other, both losing themselves in a kind of primal surrender. The extremes of detachment and mortification Bowles’s characters pursue and endure give their story the horrific beauty and otherness that other eras might have found in the lives of the saints. His unsaintly couple, neither holy nor blessed, lead our thoughts toward first and last things with an eerie surety.

Bad Mormon

Since I almost became a Mormon in 1977, (I am happy to tell you my story privately) I was intrigued by this title.

It is informative to hear it from someone raised in the culture of this religion. I agree with most of the things she says regarding this. 

This memoir is from her perspective, but she wants to diss her husband at the end (so what if he is frugal and wants to fly Southwest Airlines, really?) when it seems more like incompatibility from the get-go (she was bored on the honeymoon) than how she paints him as the "bad guy" in the relationship and "patriarchal."  That made me sad. Marriage is about compromise, and his giving up because she is just going to do it "her way" anyway reflects poorly on her more than on him. He remains quiet. This is admirable. Is he really such a bad guy when he has not said anything to denigrate her character?

Other than this part, I felt like it was a good and informative read. 

Hillbilly Elegy

No matter what your political pursuaion, this is a good read. It is about "family and culture in crisis," and I love how he weaves his personal story with facts about the state of the family in the strata of society he grew up in. 

Spiritual Conversations with Children

This is the textbook for a class I am taking with the author. I was supervising a group of new directors, and one of the other supervisors of another group asked if any of us had any experience with doing spiritual direction with kids, and I said, "No, but I know someone who does." Then I got curious and saw that Lacy taught a class about it. I thought it was a once shot deal, but it turned out to be 12 lessons over four months. I had to say no to the January-Mary one, but I signed up for the August-December one instead.

It adds more labor to my work, but I LOVE IT! I have a group of kids in one family that I meet with every week. Delightful time. I already have a full load of adults that I meet with both one-on-one and in groups, but it has been a change of pace for me that I have enjoyed. 

I was supposed to read one chapter for each class, but I needed to read the whole thing to learn about different activities with the kids. Next time we meet, I hope to "Pray in Color" (see previous post about the kids and adult version of that book). 

I like the book. 

The Moonstone (1000 Books to Read)

So fast-paced and fun to read! A true page-turner.

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

Jul 31, 2018

While the plot of The Moonstone is compelling, it is the play of its distinctive voices upon our understanding of events that makes the book truly absorbing. Clues are laid out carefully and, in retrospect at least, quite tellingly, but their meaning is obscured as we read by the shifting perspectives and personalities of the narrators. In the same way, the exoticism of the diamond that is the story’s catalyst disguises Collins’s real invention in domesticating the melodrama of the Gothic tale and inviting its titillating energy into recognizable drawing rooms, thus laying the table for Agatha Christie and countless other novelists who would set murderous puzzles close to home. Psychological acuity, formal virtuosity, the social and human amplitude of a Victorian novel, and the narrative pulse of a thriller add up to make The Moonstone the prototype of “the book you can’t put down.”

The Magic Mountain (1000 Books to Read)

This was VERY long, but it had such profound insights into the culture and the condition of Europe at the time of its writing. 

The writing is excellent. It is not for everyone, by the way. It could be called a "slog"! 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s sly, satirical novel of illness and civilization in the years before World War I, is supremely readable; more than any other modern novel of its caliber, it’s a book you can take to bed with you, for its slow unwinding of individual destinies within a communal setting evokes something akin to the feelings you might have watching the most high-minded miniseries ever filmed. Which is not to say it isn’t profound, and funny, too, filled with human foibles of every kind and replete with sexual as well as intellectual passions. All told, its unprecedented fusion of realism and symbolism appeals to the heart as much as the brain. Set almost entirely at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, where well-to-do patients from across Europe are recovering from tuberculosis, The Magic Mountain tells the story of Hans Castorp, a young man from Hamburg, who arrives to pay a short visit to his ailing cousin Joachim. Seven years later, he’s still there breathing the mountain air, unable to return to the world below. The disease of Castorp and his fellow patients is Europe’s illness, Mann implies, and, for all its liveliness of character and incident, the novel is an elegy for a culture that the author inferred was approaching its demise
 

Inner Compass

This book has been sitting on my shelf since 2018! I wanted to look at the first chapter because there is a spiritual direction exercise that I was exposed to that is adapted from the first chapter. 

Now that I have read the whole book, I see that the exercise, while great, really doesn't get to the essence of what she is saying in this book. So, I won't put her name on my handout as being "adapted from." Or I might change the exercise to fit what she is really saying. It is that good! 

This book is so good. As a director through the Exercises, I found myself underlining so many things that I would love to pass on to my directees. It is a valuable "take" on Ignatian spirituality!

Why We Can't Wait ("Letter from a Birmingham Jail") by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everyone should read this. I cannot believe it took me so long. 

I love his philosophy of non-violence. Everyone who volunteered was required to sign a commitment card that read: 

"I hereby pledge myself, my person and body, to the non-violent movement. Therefore, I will keep the following ten commandments:

1. Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.
2. Remember always that the non-violent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation, not victory.
3. Walk and talk in a manner of love, for God is love.
4. Pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.
5. Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free. 
6. Observe, with both friend and foe, the ordinary rules of courtesy. 
7. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.
8. Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.
9. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
10. Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain of the demonstration."

WOW! Such great leadership. Hero in my book. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

"Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?" That’s from the close of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the centerpiece of Why We Can’t Wait, and the book’s thematic fulcrum. The audience Martin Luther King Jr. is addressing is a group of eight white clergymen who had published an opinion piece in the Birmingham News describing the nonviolent campaign of protests against segregation led by King and others as the “unwise and untimely” acts of impatient extremists. The rest of Why We Can’t Wait augments its intensity with a more programmatic agenda for a civil rights revolution, an agenda that would bear fruit in landmark legislation in the mid-1960s. Although dated, even this portion of the book seems ever relevant, sadly enough, to our national discourse.

1 - Morning Pages

Since January 1, I have been doing most of my "morning pages in the designated journal from January to April (except when we traveled to Southeast Asia). Then, I used my Kindle Scribe until August 31. It is September 1, and I will write my morning pages on my blog. Julia Cameron says I should WRITE and not type, but she ain't my momma! I want to change it up and experiment with a different mode. I have written freewrites on here for years. Morning pages are similar to freewrites. So, here I go. 

I'll just do it for this month and see how I do.

I had a long talk with God over what has transpired over the last month or so. I cried more in August than I have in any other month in recent years. I took a good look at my summer consolations and desolations, and I realized some things about when I function well and when I falter. I even made columns for consolation and desolations. The good news is that there were three times more consolations than desolations! There were also definite patterns to both.

Consolation Patterns - friendship and connection with my family and friends. We had some gatherings here that were so precious. We spent long and leisurely time talking with friends. I also had such consolation with the spiritual direction of one-on-one directees. Also, walks in beautiful places. Learning new things. Kayaking on new waters (Great Lakes). Learning about a new place (Great Lakes). 

The Great Lakes Collection Cruise was definitely a consolation for me. The nature, learning, food, fun, etc. It was all there. 

The groups that I wrapped up leading/co-leading in May/June were pretty special: 2HC, ABC Supervision, Boller Year One, etc. It was a good year of group leading. 

Desolation patterns revealed that I don't like the pressure of having someone else determine my destiny, decide what I do, dismiss my ideas, deal unfairly, etc. 

It was good to look at this. One desolation was of my own doing: my back pain for the whole month of July. I functioned well on the cruise, but I made a big mistake by canceling my appointment with Dr. Myers because I thought I was better. I also brought it on myself by working too hard on all the documents in preparation for the 19th and 18th Annotations and OMS Retreat. Writing is a CONSOLATION for me but sitting to write them can lead to DESOLATION! Balance!!!!

There is the bell. I might lengthen the time I do this to 30 minutes because 17 was not long enough!