A Different Focus

As the first semester of this crazy year of remembering calculus and explaining it anew has sped by, I have had very little time to read...and when I have, I often end up falling asleep mid-paragraph. Even so, I have carved out some time to read a few books that have offered different perspectives for me and helped me develop a new focus.  Just a few days ago, NPR also introduced me to a new comic book artist who speaks the honest truth with her interesting images. And aside from actually reading the words I'm absorbing, I've also spent lots of time with the great Sara B. and her latest album The Blessed Unrest, which is a wonderful word-based experience as well.

NPR's article on Yumi Sakugawa was my first brush with her work, and I was intrigued by her own descriptions of her comics. I was particularly drawn to the way she talked about friendships and how they form and develop and, subsequently, influence us in such impressive ways. The article gave excerpts of her story, but you can find the full text of "I Think I am in Friend-love with You" here.  I so enjoy the process of developing a friendship, new or long-lasting, and I undoubtedly connect with the speaker in the story. On bad hair days, perhaps I also identify with the way the speaker looks in the images. Ok, maybe not, but seriously -- the unusual images Sakugawa uses gives a fanciful and albeit eerie tone to the story. Sakugawa's basic and heart-wrenchingly true wording and perfectly-accompanying drawings plays on that connection we feel when we realize someone else agrees with our opinions and the excitement of growing and learning with that person in new experiences. Just as we look forward to hanging out with those people we're in friend-love with, I'm looking forward to reading more of her work and seeing just how much she and I have in common as well.

Because so many days I don't have time to read at all, on my daily commute I have often found myself forgoing my normal habit of putting my iTunes on shuffle and instead playing Sara Barellies's The Blessed Unrest all the way through. I immediately connected with Sara's song "Brave" months ago even before the album came out; there are so many new components to my life that are causing me to show how big my brave is, and I often challenge my students to be brave -- to do something that is outside their comfort zone, to take control of something they're afraid to admit is within their power to change -- so I've been singing along at the top of my lungs many afternoons. Then when "Hercules" comes on, I turn up the radio even louder; nearly every line in this song rings true for me. I can be my own worst enemy, if I let my overactive imagination take a turn for the dark side, or I can keep moving. I'm at once empowered to think that "I'm on the hunt for who I've not yet become," while realizing that some days "I'd settle for a little equilibrium." I wonder who she's calling out to, who can make her a Hercules...by the end, all that matters is that she realizes she's the one who has to keep moving forward. While those two songs resonate the most with me, I also love the compassion in "Satellite Call," the optimism in  "Little Black Dress," the realization that what felt like paradise might seem less so in hindsight in "Eden," the permission and freedom in changing, growing into a new chapter in life in "December," and the confidence to boldly say, "I Wanna Be Like Me." Sara has a new sound on this album, but she cuts right to the heart of the matter every time, as always.

Motivated to read it before seeing the movie, in December I took a short time -- very short, just three and a half pages kind of short -- and read James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," which is found in full text all over the internet. I read the story as a freshmen in high school (and embarrassingly forgot the author's name the very next week in a Scholastic Bowl match) and wanted a recap before seeing the new movie version of it with my family over the Christmas holiday. While I remembered the premise of the story, I had clearly forgotten the details. If I had, I would've written a comparison essay in college on this and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and I'm telling you, that paper would've rocked. I might still write that paper. Anyway, when my sister asked after the movie if it followed the story, I said, "Not at all!" with an awesome grin on my face. For the first time -- and quite possibly the last -- I was completely satisfied and rather thrilled with the completely different movie version. I think it's because it so obviously used the story as a springboard, as a muse, not as a possible script, so there was no possible way to compare the two. Plus, I really liked the film Walter and the way he created his own future far more than the story Walter.

Two-thirds of my prose reading list have been non-fiction and faith-based, so you have now been forewarned of the lack of plot diagram and a very different type of character development before you read on.

First, I read Bill Hybels's Too Busy Not to Pray. As I've mentioned here before, I'm rarely a fan of nonfiction, but saying my life has been crazy the last few months is the understatement of 2013, so I thought that this book I picked up at the 2013 Global Leadership Summit, organized and hosted by Bill Hybels himself, might be a good way for me reconnect, recenter, and refocus my life in way that I desperately needed. If you know me personally, you might know that my faith is of utmost importance to me, but that doesn't mean that I like the idea of blindly following the church. Following God, on the other hand, makes sense to me, and so I focused on what I felt God was pointing out to me in this book far more than reading with the intent of becoming Bill Hybel's latest disciple. I don't think that's what Bill intended when he wrote the book, either. I read it through the lens that, "Authentic Christianity is not learning a set of doctrines and then stepping in cadence with people all marching the same way...It is a walk -- a supernatural walk with the living, dynamic, communicating God" (p. 119). Knowing Bill wrote it with this in mind, and with a mental connection to walking my Camino de Santiago, I was able to pull out ideas that are helping me build a spiritual routine that I've already noticed is slowing down my mind and my heart, helping me reflect on my day and consider how I'm going to create the future with God. This habit is merely a journaling technique that Bill describes at length and similar to what I've been doing the last several years, but mine had become stale and habitual, and certainly not sincere communication with God. With just a few tweaks to the process -- and realizing the purpose of journaling was in fact the process and not the output -- I have found a connection I'd been denying that I'd lost over the last few months.

A handful of Hybels' ideas struck me as unique, too -- a new perspective on the widow and the judge in Luke 18, the challenge to focus on God the Mountain Mover instead of the mountains in my path, to mention a couple -- and some were ideas I'd heard from my pastor (who has clearly read Bill's work as well) -- like the possible answers we receive when we pray and the obstacles that might keep our prayers from fully connecting us to God. Even the reruns, though, were good for me to revisit and reconsider. If you're looking for a way to connect, I highly recommend this book.

Second, I took just around a week to read Bob Goff's Love Does. I simply couldn't put it down. I heard Bob speak at the 2013 Global Leadership Summit as well, and I could hear his energetic and excited voice while I read his words. My take-away from his GLS talk was, "Love God, love people, and do something," which is also a great way to summarize his book. Bob gives us many short stories about his own experiences of love -- not thinking about loving or talking about loving but the kind of love that does -- and how that's shaped his understanding of God and God's character. It seems like a cyclical process to me; the more Bob did things out of love, the better he knew God; the more he knew God, the more he wanted to do things out of love. Bob talks about living a life that is fully engaged and focuses on others, of "moving from developing opinions to developing options" (p. 82). Bob's life has developed into a series of stories so incredible I wondered momentarily if these are memories or allegories, all because he's devoted to living strategically while not letting plans stifle the creative ideas that he can implement with God. From my perspective as a math teacher who thought ten years ago that she'd be an English teacher in a much, much smaller town, I understand how God's ideas can be so far from our own that we can't imagine them until they're happening. If we over plan and make every effort to ensure our detailed agendas and itineraries come to pass, we run a great risk of missing the most rewarding experiences we could never imagine on our own. With that said, Bob talks at length about how God wants to create the future with us, one based on how God's made us. Living a life with God isn't about connecting the dots God's laid out for us ahead of time, and it's not about walking through a maze that God can see from above. Instead, it's about creating a new piece of art with God as we move forward into the future. Sometimes pieces of that artwork are "obscured from view, just around another bend in the road," (just like on the Camino) but that's okay because, "You don't need to know everything when you're with someone you trust" (p. 36, 136).  He also talks about how, "God doesn't want failure to shut us down," (p. 29), which reminds me of the many lessons I've had in learning how to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. I was encouraged in his discussion of how our words can lift up others and shape their lives; it's with that mindset that I walk into my classroom every period, into every meeting, past every student and colleague in the hall. The descriptions of Christians who don't have a love-that-does and how they often turn others off when it comes to God was surprisingly encouraging; living an engaged life of love-that-does isn't just great for us, but it is also a chance for others to see God working through us.

Bob put his phone number in the back of the book and encourages people to call him and talk about love that does. He also has an email address on his website where you can send your stories about love that does. I'm going to contact Bob and let him know that he rocks and that I'm going to focus on having a love that does. I'll let you know where that story leads.

A Different Perspective

I just finished Chris Cleave's Incendiary, which I originally picked up because I was so impressed with his Little Bee. I doubt I otherwise would have so willingly read a book about a woman coping with the loss of her husband and son in a fictional terrorist attack in London had I not held so much faith in Cleave's ability to teach me something new in a way that no one else can, and teach me he did. The entire novel is told from the unnamed narrator's very personal perspective, formatted as a letter begging the terrorists to stop. She tells us exactly how she feels, what she thinks, leaving no detail unmentioned. Cleave writes in stream of consciousness reminiscent of V. Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. She tells us just how grief can paralyze a person, and just how that same person can find the strength to continue on in a world unlike anything she could have ever predicted.

Just like with Little Bee, saying much of anything about the plot of Incendiary would be giving too much away, but I do want to share one of my favorite pieces: "...but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It's like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there's always a tiny bit left isn't there?" (p. 229).

And I'll end on a final thought, one of the very, very few positive and decent thoughts that Petra, one of our narrator's acquaintances, has to offer: "So be brave" (p. 165).

******

Speaking of being brave, I highly recommend checking out Sara Barellies's new album The Blessed Unrest, on which is her newest single "Brave." The video for it is here.  As always, Miss Sara B. has somehow written songs that say what I was thinking three days ago, two weeks ago, the last year, and want to think for the next twenty. I'm considering making one of her lyrics my motto for the upcoming school year as I tackle the grand task of teaching our school's first year of AP Calc, which requires a whole different set of words that I haven't used in about a decade. 

"Show me how big your brave is." :)

"I'm aiming to be somebody this somebody trusts..."

Ok, so I'm repeating my earlier idea of blogging about a concert on the premise that her words were the driving force behind my desire to see Sara Bareilles in concert (again). The woman is an amazing writer. Really.

I started listening to Sara a few years ago when her first album Little Voice came out, and I've been rather obsessed ever since. During my first summer in the apartment, I'd turn on her album around 10 AM when I started working on lesson plans and just let it play in the background on repeat all day, sometimes late into the night as I stayed up facebooking and IMing. Some of the songs still conjure up very specific memories of that summer, certain conversations, certain places (including, but not limited to, a flight to WA state), certain people. I still love how she sings about finding her identity and finding love (or, let's be honest, maybe just chasing a little lust), dealing with hope and loss and confusion and pride, all with equal portions of sassy attitude and vulnerability that we'd usually rather keep hidden. And yes, I meant to say "we" and not "she" -- because that's how she writes her songs, in some magical way that makes me feel like I wrote the words when I'm belting them out at the top of my lungs in the car. I feel like her lyrics are strong, inspiring -- like "I'm aiming to be somebody this somebody trusts...there's only one thing worth trying to be, and it's love..." (from "Bottle It Up" -- check out the lyrics, it's chocked full of great lines). So it was awesome Tuesday night to hear her sing more of those songs that pulled me back two summers and reminded me, then and now, that somebody out there might feel something like I do (which, if you haven't noticed, is what I look most for in great writing).

So then last summer when I found out she was playing for free in St. Louis, I nearly fainted. Tina and Em and I arrived freakishly early and got the best seats possible, and I was completely entranced the entire time she was on stage. The whole concert was like a conversation; somehow I felt like we were all sharing something with her instead of simply listening to what she had to say.

When her second album Kaleidoscope Heart came out last fall, I stayed up late (on a school night) to buy it on iTunes and then listen to the whole album while reading along in the booklet. Obsessed, right? The songs were very different from the first album, and yet I felt like she finally put to words what I'd been feeling for weeks, months perhaps. It was like the stars aligned, and the fates said, "Having trouble finding the right words? Here you go -- hers might do the job, and she even put them to a nice little tune." I listened to her album day after day on my commute home -- even on the way to work every now and then, which is usually a treasured, silent 45 minutes of my day. At Tuesday's concert, I got goosebumps when she (we -- all of Kirkland, really) sang "Uncharted" and "Let the Rain." I loved hearing the background stories for songs, especially one that I only halfheartedly connected with before. She sang one song that I often skipped on the album, and I realized two things: first, that I started skipping it because it hit too close to home, and second, that it no longer did (yeah!).

Now, switch gears for a minute with me. I'm totally impressed with Ms. Sara because she writes her own songs, which isn't always the case in the music industry, and that makes it feel like the songs are that much more powerful. With that said, she also covered other people's songs -- including "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons, which I love, again at least partially because of the lyrics. Realizing that this wonderful wordsmith likes a song that I like, well, that was just the icing on the cake. (Side note on this song -- she wasn't "allowed" to curse during the show, so she had some audience participation to determine what words she would use as substitutes in that song. Fun little activity, but it royally pissed me off that she was censored. That's a topic for another Words blog, though.)

I feel like this blog is particularly rambly and a bit cheesy (I feel a little like a little kid who met her idol, running back to her family saying, "Did you see her?! She was right there!"), but I'm just not sure how to convey how awesome it is to hear someone else say exactly what I've been thinking. I'm all about being unique individuals, but connecting with others like that is sometimes the only way I feel like this life has any focus. So check her out, listen to some of her music and see if she resonates with you, too. Or, if you know she doesn't already, spend the afternoon listening to someone who does, and tell me who it is. Maybe I'll find a new obsession.

"I made up my mind when I was a young girl, that I've been given this one world, and I won't worry it away..." from "Many the Miles"