My [not] to-do list

I have a friend who likes to make me feel guilty about not accomplishing stuff in my life every day. Try as I might, I cannot budge her thinking that everyone must have a never-ending to-do list.

I have tried to point out that for me, the purpose of a to-do list is to get to the end of it, thereby having nothing left “to do.” For her, the purpose of a to-do list is to tick things off so she can continue adding more and more to it. I accept that this is her God-given personality. I just wish she would accept that mine is also valuable and God-given.

It comforts me to read some of the quotes I’ve collected on combating stress and taking time to relax.

“The man who doesn't relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on,” wrote Elbert Hubbard.

How wise of Elbert Hubbard to recognize that stress can send you right into the loony bin. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton also realized this:

“We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.”

“Take rest,” said Ovid, “a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” I believe God meant something like this when he commanded us to rest one day a week. How many of us really do that, though? To be honest, for me, sometimes the rush of getting to the worship service and putting dinner on the table afterwards makes the day a dreaded chore rather than a welcome reprieve.

Even Winnie-the-Pooh, one of the wisest characters I know, understands that we need to reach the end of that list at some point, as seen in the following advice from Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne
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“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering”

But in our Puritan-inspired zeal to work hard, we forget that

"A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward." (George Jean Nathan)

Without rumination would we even notice the beauty in the world? I’m quite sure we would never imitate it in our art. Steven Halpern made an interesting observation about our modern-day need for stimulation and busyness:

“When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment.”

I’m not sure if I actually believe the bit about our bodies being out of wack, but maybe there’s something to it. Think about most of the sounds God created: the whine of a cricket (or a horde of them), the sound of moving water (or an ocean), even an angry shout – none of them can be heard over the average decibel of most audio equipment. Were our bodies designed to hear anything louder than the relatively short thunderstorm or even a room full of people shouting?

Don’t get me wrong; I grew up in the 70’s and like amplified music as much as today’s teens, but there is still something in my soul that needs to hear nothing more than the sounds of nature – at least once in a while.

So I will revel in my recognition that it is good to be still. When my daughter is grown, she will probably not remember how many times a month I vacuumed but she will remember the times we laid together on my bed, making her stuffed animals talk in funny voices.

It’s good to be in the company of so many others who recognized that ticking off items on a “to do” list is not the reason we were put on this earth.

Books

I have quite a collection of quotes about books. Do any of these strike you, too?

"I am a part of all I have read."
- John Kieran

To that quote, I'll add one of my own:
"All I have read has become a part of me."
-Karyn Campbell

"People read to know they're not alone."
- A quote from the movie, "Shadowlands"
The movie is about C.S. Lewis, but I don't think he wrote that quote. Doesn't matter. It's a good one.

"Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed til dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who -- you know perfectly well -- are made up."
-Barbara Kingsolver

And finally one from the Facebook application iThink:

"Life is not a gothic novel. It's just not. Stop wearing black and being depressed. Eventually you will have to get a job."
-Wish I knew who said that, but I don't.

Of cliches and pat answers

As I leaf through the pages of my journal of quotes that have struck me, I realize that I am attracted to the words of people who have suffered. People who have suffered deeply do not offer cliche answers -- because they know there are none. And a reading of the Old Testament Book of Job reveals that religion doesn't offer pat answers either.

"Pain is pain and sorrow is sorrow," writes Margaret Clarkson in Grace Grows Best in Winter. "It hurts. It limits. It impoverishes. It isolates. It restrains. It works devastation deep within the personality. It circumscribes us in a thousand bitter ways. There is nothing good about it."

How true that is. And when you have suffered deep pain, there is something false in even the best cliches. We know that for some people, joy does NOTcome in the morning. For some, the pain does NOT make us stronger. It weakens us and works devastation deep within.

And yet.

And yet. "But the gifts God can give with it are the richest the human spirit can know," Clarkson writes.

There is always an "and yet" with God.

"When we learn to rest our souls in God's mighty truths, our suffering takes on eternal dimensions. Our pain may not grow less, our loss may not be restored, or griefs may still be ours, but their power to harm us is broken," Clarkson says.

Let us be careful of the easy cliches and pat answers we offer people. Yes, in Job, God restored his health, his home, his riches and even 10 new children for the 10 who died. But that doesn't mean God will do the same thing for me.

Marie Balter knows deep suffering as well. She became mentally ill at age 17 and spent 20 years in various institutions. She gradually emerged from the terror of the back wards, graduated with a Master's Degree from Harvard and became a champion for the mentally ill.

"People always ask me, 'Do you regret the years you lost in the mental hospital? Are you angry at the unnecessary pain you suffered? I guess my perspecive is different. I try not to dwell on blame or regret. And I really believe that the suffering in my life occurs for a higher purpose, giving me strength and understanding to help others who might be in a similar situation. Those years in [the hospital] weren't lost nor were they wasted. They were years of preparation, years of learning. They were years which enabled hope to grow from the desolate world of loneliness."

Marie doesn't know why she suffered, but she knows that God will redeem it. Sometimes that is all we can hope for. As Marie writes:

"I will build an altar unto You, O God, of the broken pieces of my heart."

Sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes all that can be redeemed is an altar. And somehow that's enough.

The perfect moment

Have you ever had a perfect moment? I think I've had several, each one more perfect than the last, reveling to me that the "perfect moment" would pale next to the coming perfect moment.

When I was in second grade, my perfect moment came when my best friend Sarah Bolan invited me to spend the night with her. All the 7-year-old longings of being best friends and having it known culminated in that invitation and although it was 40 years ago, I remember playing under the apple trees in her yard, seeing her horses and knowing that my best friendship was reciprocated.

Willa Cather once wrote, "Out of every wandering in which people and places come and go in long successions, there is always one place remembered above the rest because the external or internal conditions were such that they most nearly produced happiness . . ."

Perhaps Willa only had one of those places, but I've had several.

Another one that comes to mind was graduate school at the University of South Carolina. I was still under 30 and studying journalism with a handful of graduate students who were passionate about writing.

My best friend, Janine, was from Oxford, England and had once traveled to the top of Mt. Kilamanjaro for Christmas Eve. I also hung out with Pamela, who actually lived in my neighborhood and was always ready to stop what she was doing to meet me for a walk and discussion of deep things, important things -- like philosophy and which professors were dating which students, what we thought of religion, how it felt to lose a child, what was the easiest way to get As in our courses and more. She knew the actor, Mark Harmon, who had just finished filming the Presidio, and it was cool to hear her talk about "Maaaark" with a barely discernible "r" in her posh British accent.

Then there was the lovely Morman guy who I had a secret crush on (pity he was married) and was the only one who joined me in striving for perfect grades on every assignment. He was in my study group and I loved, admired and was envious of him all mixed up together.

Some of us used to meet for chicken Caesar salads and drink cheap wine at obscure little restaurants in downtown Columbia. It felt like a group of writers meeting at a cafe in Paris in the 1920s -- all so young, having no idea they would one day become great.

One night Janine called us all up because her Air Force, globe-trotting American husband was in town and she wanted to have a party. That was the first time I had curry and all kinds of lovely dishes from around the world. I think the husband and I were the only Americans and it was a wonderful evening of trying new foods, listening to a mish mash of languages and talking to people who knew things and cared about the same things I did.

I felt strangely alive among these students from Europe and China and the U.S., all of us with the common bond of mass communication. I never wanted it to end and in a way it didn't -- because it will always be with me and it changed me in small, indiscernable ways -- but permanently.

Of course, there have been many more significant moments and places -- my six years in Japan, the day I got my daughter from China, my first kiss, but those things are supposed to produce happiness. It's expected. It's those other moments and seasons when you almost didn't even know you were happy; you have to look back to realize that now you are missing the ingredients that, mixed together, most nearly produced happiness.

Willa Cather realized that it's hard to anticipate what will comprise your perfect moment, but one thing you can be sure of, you will have at least one and you will remember it forever.

Cather writes,"One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame."

Have you had your perfect moment yet? I hope so. Please comment and share, what was a moment that most nearly produced happiness for you.