What I am Reading Today:
Mitten Strings for God, by Katrina Kenison
I really needed this book. I am always complaining at how "imposed from without" our busy-ness is, but don't always pause and take a moment to try and find ways to center ourselves despite the outside demands I can't get rid of. To tell the truth, I'm guilty of racing on to the next thing, myself, and thinking of what else I need to be doing, even when what I really want are moments of connectedness with my family.
Kenison says, "We do too much and savor too little." "I have found that it is much easier for me to stay busy than to make a commitment to empty time--not surprising, perhaps, in a culture that seems to equate being busy with being alive." "When I come to a stop myself, when I draw a circle of stillness around me, my children are drawn into that peaceful place. They visibly relax, as if my very calmness nourishes them." She makes a strong case for reducing the extraneous noise of our lives--now I'm a mom of 3 boys. It's never going to be NOISELESS here until they leave home. But I have felt for some time that we don't need the constant noise we add in--TV, radio, constant music. Ack! And I do like music. But I've gotten so that I crave a little quiet. No one ever wants to just listen to birds or neighborhood noises anymore. I've lately focused a lot of my ire on the TV, much to my dh's dismay. But it makes me feel jittery to have it always on! I feel unnerved, and I know it isn't good for the rest of the family either, even if it is "easier." Sometimes I have dark fantasies of tossing it and the computer games out into the back yard and attacking them with a sledgehammer. :-) Kenison quotes Thomas Moore (note the two O's, lol) as saying, "The vessel in which soulmaking takes place is an inner container, scooped out by reflection and wonder." I believe we shorcircuit this process by the continual noise, and I believe modern humans suffer for it. We don't know ourselves anymore. We aren't truly in touch with our thoughts or with the thoughts of those around us, because we continually drown them out with perpetual noise. Kenison writes "In our house, eliminating television cleared a space for the things we really care about." I believe that TV leaches into spaces that we don't even realize, making us think we have "no time" even when we do. Kenison's son Henry said, "Just say that TV fills your head up with other people's ideas, which means that you don't have as much room for your own. Also, it's a waste of time." Wow. I have to admit, I wonder what I'm missing. I'd like to find out. :-)