Significant happenings in my life recently:
* I began volunteering in a refugee program as a class room aide for a month long summer camp for Bhutanese, Iraqi, Sudanese, Ukranian, and Cuban children who are launching into the American School system. We are trying to give them a boost in English and math skills and to love them and welcome them to our community.
* I watched from a distance of 10,000 miles the birth of South Sudan celebrating their birthday and independence today July 9th.
* I've begun caring for my adopted Mom and Dad who live in Mt. Angel so am making weekly trips to walk with them through all the challenges of being dependent on others to survive and thrive as they reach into their 8th and 9th decades of life.
This morning I realized I am launching into a new favorite book that makes me want to share it with everyone who is interested in finding that quiet place to learn more of the mysteries of life and creativity.
The book is called A Circle Of Quiet, by Madeleine L'Engle. She writes, as the book cover declares, in an "attempt..(to) explore the meaning of her life..."
I love this passage I just read this morning:
"personally, my intellect is a stumbling block to much that makes life worth living: Laughter, love, a willing acceptance of being created. The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work itself slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem. Facing this does help to eradicate do-it-yourself hubris from an artist's attitude towards his painting or music or writing. My characters pull me, push me, take me further than I want to go, fling open doors to rooms I don't want to enter, throw me out to interstellar space, and all this long before my mind is ready for it.There's a reason for that, chaps!While Alan (her son) was in school, his science teacher was an inept young man who kept blowing things up, remarking through the stench of chemical smoke and the crashing of broken glass, 'There's a reason for that, chaps!'I must be willing to accept the explosions which take place deep down in the heart of the volcano, sending up occasional burst of flame into the daylight of consciousness."
This passage made me laugh out loud with joy! It tickled my weird sense of humor, especially in her description of the inept science teacher. (I have memories of high school chemistry class where I have a vague memory of blowing something up myself and feeling so inept and appalled.) The joy comes from sensing the mystery of which she speaks and the expanse of what is opened by living into the mystery.
