Swallows and Amazons (1000 Books to Read)

After reading a sad but good book (From Here to the Great Unknown) and a terrible book (Something Happened), reading a sweet, wholesome, imaginative Children's Classic that I had never heard of before was refreshing!

It reminded me of my brother and me pretending that the weird concrete island at the end of our street was a ship. It also made me think of the adorable 12, 10, 8, and 5-year-olds I did spiritual direction with from August to December! Most of them are the same age as the characters in the book. 

Sometimes a light and fun read is just what the doctor ordered!

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

James Mustich

Swallows and Amazons is the first in Arthur Ransome’s classic series of books about the children of the Walker family. In their initial appearance, the Walkers—John (the oldest, at twelve), Susan (ten), Titty (eight), and Roger (seven)—are summering with their mother in England’s Lake District, and the lakeland setting seems alive with the anticipation of a holiday. Adventure ensues when their friends' uncle's boat is burgled, but all comes right in the end, setting the stage for ten delightful sequels that similarly celebrate the resourcefulness of young people allowed to get their hands dirty as they master real skills—boating, camping, fishing, and the like—in a delightfully imagined but recognizable natural world.

Something Happened (1000 Books to Read)

I think this might be my LEAST favorite book at the end of the year. 

YUK! I did not like it. "My wife is unhappy. My daughter is unhappy. My son has difficulties. Now, my son does not talk to me." In the meantime, he is having adulterous affairs with the women in his office, paying for the abortion of one of them. It is the DUMBEST book.

Don't read it. 

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

The product of thirteen years’ gestation, Something Happened is an anatomy of middle-aged disenchantments that is both wildly funny and suffused with a desperate sorrow. Its narrator, Bob Slocum, is an office worker on the wearying escalator of a senseless though sometimes vicious corporate track; a husband whose marriage resides in a different dimension from his heart; a father terrified by the opacity, vulnerability, and willfulness of his children; an individual whose once eager innocence has been tarnished by the indefinable something that so surely happened to set him in his hopeless ways. Although Slocum’s narration embodies his banal life, Heller’s almost surreal focus on its very banality transforms it, by an astonishing act of literary sleight of hand, into something mesmerizing.

From Here to the Great Unknown.

Heartwarming and so heart-breaking too. I loved this book. I remember where I was when I heard Elvis died in 1977. (Working at the Pacifica Hotel in Culver City, CA). My boss was undone and played Elvis songs all day. The nation was in mourning. This book gives the perspective of his little girl.

I read this after seeing a great podcast interview with Riley Keough. 

It was excellent:

Or listen on Apple Podcast:

The Haunting of Hill House (1000 Books to Read)

Ok, but nothing to rave about. 

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

Shirley Jackson’s penultimate novel, The Haunting of Hill House, constitutes a masterpiece of psychosexual anxiety. Her wickedly disturbing passion play, enacted by the four (later, six) individuals gathered at the cursed mansion known as Hill House, perfectly equates the interior state of the spinsterish protagonist, Eleanor Vance, with the confusing, calamitous rooms and the surrounding acreage of the titular dwelling. Besides serving as a quietly horrifying testament to one woman’s disintegration, Jackson’s mordant 1959 book also brings a fresh sophistication to the horror genre through its characters’ recognition of what the plot will demand of them. By their conversation when they first meet, they make clear that they know they’re enacting clichéd roles from myriad films and novels. But their ultra-modern awareness fails to forestall the actual terror, and this is perhaps Jackson’s scariest assertion: The intellect is no real bulwark against the darkness. 

Stoner (1000 Books to Read)

This is the story of a life. So well-written. This line stuck out to me: 

"His life was nearly what he thought it should be." 

It is sad...and beautiful. 

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

A summary of what happens in Stoner might well prompt even the most devoted book lover to consider a movie instead. A young farm boy named William Stoner goes off to an agricultural college where he develops a passion for poetry. He embarks on an undistinguished career as an assistant professor of English; his colleagues hold him in no particular esteem. He marries and has a daughter, but his home life becomes a long estrangement from his wife, and fatherhood is fraught with hesitations and mistakes. The hope he discovers in an affair with a colleague is scuttled by university politics. Stoner is “about work, the hard unyielding work of the farms; the work of living within a destructive marriage and bringing up a daughter with patient mutability in a poisoned household; the work of teaching literature to mostly unresponsive students,” writes Irish novelist John McGahern in an introduction to its 2006 reissue. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound inviting. The unexpected power of this unassuming tale is rooted in the way in which the author depicts the concentration of Stoner’s inner being despite the diffusion of his outer life. The cumulative effect of Williams’s unflinching attention to Stoner’s ordinary life is strangely exhilarating—breathtaking, really—in its recognition that our inward selves embrace so much more than our outward lives appear to hold. 

Friday Freewrite Fifteen

I have not had a Freewrite in quite a while. So I am going for it and not lifting my fingers from the keyboard. 

I went to the Pastors Prayer Summit. It is for pastors and leaders in the Mid-Willamette Valley. It was lovely. It is hard to believe that I have not been there for 10 years (I worked on MW for TTH from 2015-2022 and couldn't go in 23 or 24). I don't think I would have gone had it not been for Kai who wanted someone to go with.

I don't fit into a nice neat "position" for the Church of the Valley, but I told people I "freelance for Jesus" and invest in leaders locally, but most of my ministry is with people outside the walls of the church.

I liked it. Even though I do not fit in neatly, I felt really comfortable there, and Mel (who organizes the rooms) gave me a HUGE room on the other side of the street. I didn't get an ocean view, but I loved how big it was and how I could dance in it because it was so big. I got up at 2 am the first morning and 4 am the second morning. It was so fun to read through my journal from the Pastor's Prayer Summit 10 years earlier!

In fact, I read what I wrote at a prayer time I had at the Trappist Monastery in LaFayette, and I soaked in Mark 6:31 about "coming apart" to a lonely place to pray, and then the meditation for the whole group was Mark 6! I loved it and realized how relaxed I was there at the Summit and how much less effort I put into everything these days. I put less effort into relating to people at the OSU Women's Basketball Alumni Reunion and being nervous about speaking and getting up in front of the crowd the weekend before the Summit, and I wasn't stressed at all driving to and from the Summit in the SNOW!

What has happened to me? I was in a Triad with sweet Jennifer, who I remember from the Summit 10 years ago, and Kai asked me to be in the same one. I felt so comfortable sharing, and it was lovely. I think that was my favorite part of the Summit too. 

The women are lovely. Three of the leaders are women who I did two years of a meditation group with. They are entrenched in this Church of the Valley life, and it is good. I was able to see them 10 years later and know that was when I was still trying to find out the best place for me, and it is definitely Spiritual Direction.

I had a great time with Kai on the way home and almost was overwhelmed with an avalanche of snow in the passing lane that had not been plowed, but I did well. It was nice. She is a good listener too. I pray she becomes a spiritual director someday.

So, I came home to the lovely BELOVED CHARTERS of the three people I am leading through the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. It is such a life-giving group. I love them and know that is where I belong.

Finally, I met Bonnie, who is looking for a spiritual direction supervisor, and Pam, who has been through the Exercises of Ignatius! WOW! I sat right between them and thought, "This is a God thing!"

So, I think it has been fifteen minutes, but I will keep on typing until the alarm goes off. 

I also loved interviewing a new directee who is going through the Order of the Mustard Seed Year of Preparation. This is how I will give to the OMS this year. I have three people in the Year of Preparation. 

I also start the 18th Annotation with three people. It is unknown how that will turn out. I pray it goes well. Our first meeting is Feb 20. That is in 13 days. I am praying.

Oh, one more person I met along the way was a woman who had been through a similar spiritual abuse situation that I went through 19 years ago. It is so hard to believe that that was in 2006, and here I am - so healed and whole and thankful for what God taught me through the situation. She is only seven years out and still healing from it.