It is June 22 which means VBS is over and my summer begins!  As I promised in the “10 Things I Miss” post (June 12, 2012) I have a list of books and my fingers are itching to hit the “Buy Now With One Click” button to load my Kindle.  Here’s my line up:

1. The God Box: Sharing My Mother’s Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go by Mary Lou Quinlan — After her mother’s death, Mary Lou found boxes full of little scraps of paper with her mother’s prayers written on them.  How lovely.  I might start my own box this summer.

2.  On Writing Well by William Knowlton Zinsser — We’ll see if things improve around here after reading this.

3.  The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy —  I like history, I like presidents and I like getting inside exclusive places.

4.  Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)  by Suzanne Collins — Because I read the first book and heard this one is even better.

5.  A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God’s Sovereignty by Joni Eareckson Tada —  I have great respect for someone who has been in a wheelchair for decades, wrestles with suffering, yet still has a vital faith in God.

6.  A Week in the Life of Corinth by Ben Witherington III — I’ve read First Corinthians and Second Corinthians, but not this one.  I’m hoping this book will give depth to the other two.

7.  The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles  by Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne — I love books that have really long subtitles.  I don’t really know if I have inner creative battles, but I probably will after reading this book.  Then I will be able to break through them.  And win.

8.  Lit!  A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke —  Once I read a book titled “How to Read a Book”.  I loved it.  Books about how to read books are almost as good as reading real books.

9.  Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard —  I heard this is a trendy book.  Then I saw LeBron on SportsCenter reading it in the locker room before an NBA finals game and things turned out pretty good for him.

10.  I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman by Nora Ephron —  I sometimes feel bad about my middle age midriff bulge and grey hair.  So far, my neck hasn’t been a problem, so I’m thinking I’d better be ready if that’s the next thing to go. 

See?   I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to get ten new books.  Yay for summer!  What are  you reading?

Anne Morrow Lindbergh is my BFF.  I’ve never met her personally and she’s no longer living, but I know if our paths had crossed, we would have been kindred spirits.  She was the wife of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, author of several books, and mother to six children, one of which was kidnapped and murdered.  I stumbled across her published diaries in a library years ago and our friendship began.  Anne and I wouldn’t have agreed on everything; her marriage wasn’t perfect, her life wasn’t without heartache, her views on God and spirituality would have made for some intense conversation between us.  But she bared her soul in her journals and wrote so beautifully about her desire to find balance.

Her book “Gift From the Sea” was published in 1955.  I take it off the shelf every few years, just to stop by for a visit with my interesting and thoughtful friend who was trying to figure out how to juggle being a wife, mother, artist and citizen.   She wrote about the different stages of a woman’s life, so every time I re-read this book, I find something new to appreciate because I’m in a new stage myself.

“But I want first of all – in fact, as an end to these other desires – to be at peace with myself.  I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.  I want, in fact – to borrow from the language of the saints – to live ‘in grace’ as much of the time as possible.”

On marriage:  “A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules.  The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but swift and free…. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing.  Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back – it does not matter which.  Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.” 

On children growing up and leaving home:  “A most uncomfortable stage followed, not sufficiently anticipated…Plenty of solitude, and a sudden panic at how to fill it…With me, it was not a question of simply filling up the space or the time.  I had many activities and even a well-established vocation to pursue.  But when a mother is left, the lone hub of a wheel, with no other lives revolving about her, she faces a total re-orientation.  It takes time to re-find the center of gravity.”

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. ~Chinese Saying

Ever since I wrote the post “Old Friends” (Nov. 14, 2011), a thought has been brewing in my head.  (These things take time…)  All those notebooks filled with deep and delicious words that I copied out of my favorite books are just sitting on my shelf.  It seems like such a shame.  So, I’ve decided to share some of my old friends here from time to time.  I hope the quotations inspire you for a moment or more.  Perhaps they will whet your appetite for the book or author and you can make some new friends of your own. 

From “Into the Depths of God” by Calvin Miller:

“Bathos (Greek word for ‘deep’) is a word I really discovered at the Great Barrier Reef.  My son had come to scuba dive while my wife and I snorkeled.  While my son plunged deeply beneath clear waters to bury himself in the wonder of the mysterious ocean depths, my wife and I, wearing masks, only floated on the surface facedown.

In some ways, what we were all seeing looked the same.  However, the truth is that the content of our experience was greatly different.  We will both spend the rest of our lives talking about that experience and our enthusiasm will always be exuberant.  But only our son really knew the Reef; he understood the issue of depth…. In some ways it seems to me that much of Christianity is a conversation of snorkelers talking to each other of scuba experiences.

The inscrutable glories of the deep cannot be described to those hooked on the safety of shallowness….  We can see that the tide pools hold no deep adventure.  We can even feel the lure of the dark and haunting indigo of the ocean’s soul.  Still, we balk at real inward adventure.  Our shallow spirituality holds nothing profound, but it is safe.”

On prayer:  “I suspect that the difference between a person of seasoned prayer and one of smaller prayer experience is the amount of time they spend talking rather than listening.  I used to be troubled by Paul’s admonition to ‘pray without ceasing’.  I now believe this is only possible to those who have had enough significant prayer experience to make the listening prayer the largest part of their praying.  Those whose prayers are unending monologues make themselves a giant mouth while making God a small ear.  St. Anthony said that the best prayer comes when we no longer remember we are praying.”

On time: “We cannot possibly flatter the Almighty by hurrying into his presence, flinging a song and a prayer at him, and hurrying out of church back into our hassled lifestyles.  God is never flattered by our sanctified exhaustion…  God does not wear a watch.  His unthinkable glory is learned only in our time-consuming communion with him…   All watches must be checked at the gates of the throne room.  Real relationships never keep their eye on the clock…  The believer who wants an in-depth affair with Christ must not allow time clocks and ledger sheets to destroy that wonderful holy leisure by which we make friends with God.”

What are your thoughts, my Small Drop friends?

 No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Some of my best friends are books.  Once in a while, I pull some of my all-time favorites off the shelf and re-read the highlighted sections.  (They wouldn’t be favorites if there weren’t highlights.)  It feels like a visit with an old friend.

You can’t highlight in borrowed library books, however, so years ago I started copying out portions of literature into notebooks.  I used a regular old spiral, college ruled notebook and wrote in longhand, old fashioned girl that I am.  Whenever I read a book, I kept a pencil in hand and made a slight mark in the margin when something seemed especially significant to me.  Then, when I finished the book, I went back and copied out all the sections that were marked.  Sometimes it was a sentence or two; sometimes a paragraph or two; occasionally a page or two.  If I realized that I was about to copy most of a book, I knew it deserved a place on my shelf and I bought a copy of my own.   However, writing the words out in a notebook helped me retain more of the information and made it easier to refer to later.

There is something about the scritch-scritch of pencil on paper that engages all my senses.  The feel of the pencil in my hand, the smell of the graphite and wood and paper, the sound of cursive letters being laid down, the language taking shape before my eyes.  Writing words down is like grabbing ahold of a fleeting thought and giving it a place to land, to nest. 

Now I have several notebooks full of excerpts and quotes.  And on quiet, rainy Sunday afternoons,  I might sit with one of my old friends and and have a visit.

…of making many books there is no end…  Ecclesiastes 12:12