new books

i got new books in the mail yesterday!

Contemplative Prayer and Inner Awakening
Living Buddha, Living Christ
Middlemarch (I've never ready this George Elliot classic)

I love books.

Books: Pyongyang

I came across this book while I was at Vroman's the other day. It is so random. But it made me laugh and have a good time. I almost didn't want to go watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which turned out to be hilarious although it was uncomfortable thinking about how J. must imagine me as "the devil" Miss Sarah Marsall).

Drawn and written (it's all in comic strip format) by a French (yes, French!) cartoonist, it depicts his business trip to the forbidden country and all the peculiarities of this sad closed off country. It's an unlikely but successful cartoon version of a travel memoir with a good dose of self-deprecating humour and an underlying sense of compassion within his bizarre encounters. Educational too. I was able to envision the landscape and temperament of North Korea far better than any other writings I've come across.

Highly recommended. I will definitely go back to the bookstore to read some more.

musings 2

perfect couples don't exist.  marriage is about two imperfect people who love each other, are willing to act on that love, and build a life that nurtures both of them.  and the building begins after marriage, not before.

i like my toes.  pedicures make me happy.

solitude is necessary for my health.

Lolita is a disturbing masterpiece.  I almost feel like I'm committing a sin reading it but then the literary quality is so superb that art trumps pedophiliac content.

taking a sick day was a great idea.

making goals and reaching them is wonderful for your self esteem.

if you feel insane about something in your life, act. do something different.  anything different.  sanity is breaking the pattern.

i think i should go into the greeting card business.  most of my musings sound like pop culture quotes.

i miss him.  trying to be constant.  in love.

Hope Against Darkness

I've been reading Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety by Richard Rohr. Every page is full of one liners that are captivating and freeing.  He puts his finger right on your sore spot and it makes you squirm but in the end, you see more and feel better.  There is a way after all!  I suppose that's what hope is about.

Today, Richard Rohr explained the paradox of control freaks and happiness.  How it alludes them.  And how they try to control even more to attain it when the key to happiness is faith, holding the tension of the world through the cross, and accepting the pain in your life instead of trying to find out who is to blame.

Everything is still hazy.  I don't know exactly why but his words are giving me hope.  I'm beginning to see that in life, it's not even about getting what you want that makes you happy.  The thing is, what are you going to do when you don't get those things?  What if I don't get to travel around the world for a year?  What if I don't meet the man of my dreams?  What if I don't have that successful career I've always imagined for myself?  What if I don't get the MFA that I thought would make me truly happy?  Will my life really suck?  Or not be worth living?  No, the answer must be no, although I have believed that lie for a while now.

Knowing what you want is a good start to heading in a direction.  But attaining those things never means you will be happy.  Happiness and freedom comes from attending to your calling every day, knowing that you have a God that is for you and loves you, knowing that life happens and at the end of the day, you have to be happy for how you lived your life, not what you did or what you attained.

It's complex.  It's full of twists and turns.  I still can't wrap my head around it.  But my heart is filling with hope.  I'm feeling the freedom I thought only a trip around the world could give me.

Silence by Shusaku Endo

When I read books, I wait for a feeling to hit me at the end.  I want to be moved...to joy, to sadness, to pathos, something.  I will usually judge a book by how much I am moved.  I've read books with stellar, epic narratives that are expertly weaved together.  But if it doesn't leave me with an exquisite pang about the human experience, I feel like it wasn't worth it.  When I read Silence by Shusaku Endo, I was filled with a very tangible sense of grace and an ache and awe for the mystery of faith.  It was hard and profound.  It makes you confront the weakness of religion and human psyche's strugggle to pursue an ideal that will never be as wonderful as you thought it would be.  And yet it shows the human desire to keep pursuing a faith that lives in our hearts no matter how much society or ourselves want to beat it out.   Although the events took place in Japan during the 1500s, I felt grace transcending from the narrative to my mind and soul as I read the book in my new apartment.  It gave me what I needed to get through a hard day.