I’ve just now returned home from a long and exciting and difficult trip, and I’m reminded of a passage I greatly love from this book which concerns transition:
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Colin Turnbull, in his marvellous accounting of the Mbuti peoples of Zaire, passes along to us their understanding of the dangers in transition. The Mbuti see the person as being in the center of a sphere. In moving from here to there, the sphere moves too and offers protection. If movement in time or space is too sudden or vehement, we risk the danger of reaching the boundaries of the sphere too quickly, before the center has time to catch up. When this happens, a person becomes wazi-wazi, or disoriented and unpredictable. If you pierce through the safe boundaries of the sphere into the other world, you risk letting in something else which takes your place. If the Mbuti know of and guard against such violent and sudden motion ~ and that without the experience of automobiles or jet planes ~ what do we, the so-called civilized people of the world, know of our transitions in space and time? I think we are a whole society in a state of wazi-wazi, beside ourselves, and possessed by imposter selves.
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I’d say I’m in a state of wazi-wazi right at the moment. I think I’ll go read the rest of the chapter while soaking in a hot tub.

I wrote a story over here, under another edition of Walden on all-consuming. I read the book some time ago, so I have no idea what edition I read, or if it is still in print, but it really doesn’t matter.

I consumed this book repeatedly when I was in college and then when starting at my first full-time job. I recently came across a wrinkled old index card containing one of my favorite quotes, which I’d typed using an old-fashioned typewriter:
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I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
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Looking back over many years, I can’t claim any great or brilliant success at doing this, and often I’m quite a failure at doing it, and yet this quote is still full of inspiration and hope. Maybe re-typing it today will help remind me to carefully and creatively attend to the details of today, and thereby make it a worthy one.

I’ve written about it here on 43 Things.

Our book group watched this movie together this morning. I really enjoyed it, as did all the other members. We only saw what was on the 1st disk, but one member of our group said the 2nd disk was also worth watching.

I like this line in the movie review at Amazon by Benjamin J. Burgraff: “this is not a movie for nitpickers, but for dreamers.”

My Wednesday book group is taking the summer off from reading to watch movies. We watched this movie today, and apparently we are all dreamers. We all found it entertaining and touching, in spite of its faults. By the end, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

Orazio Gentileschi, The Lute Player, c. 1612/1620
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
http://www.nga.gov/image/a00006/a0000609.jpg

One of my favorite meditations in the book is about this painting. Sister Wendy writes “It might seem rather paradoxical to take a musician as an image of silence, but what I have always found so beautiful about Gentileschi’s Lute Player is her attitude of listening… Music is a kind of prayer, a very real one, just as are poetry and art. Go further: if we truly seek God, everything is prayer to us.”

I first encountered Sister Wendy, “the art nun,” on public television, when I watched one of her programs about art. Since I’ve moved here, I’ve found a couple of her books about art in the local library, and have been consuming them. In them, she writes about all kinds of art, from ancient to modern.

I also recently found the book Sister Wendy on Prayer in the public library. The introduction contains lots of interesting biographical information and descriptions of Sister Wendy’s unusual daily routines, written by her television producer. The book itself is a collection of short meditations on prayer, and some of them discuss the connection between art and prayer, as Sister Wendy sees it.

I find Sister Wendy quite a fascinating person. Here is a short passage about her “unconventional and refreshingly personal approach to art,” taken from the book on prayer cited above:

I always like writing about art. Quite apart from the beauty of the pictures, which can distract you from any inadequacies on the part of the text, we are dealing only with opinions. I am telling you that this is what I think. What do you think? If you take another look at any work of art, (a long look), and find you disagree with me, I am only too pleased.

This little book was originally part of The Nutshell Library, a set of four adorable miniature books written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. “Pierre” was my favorite of the group by far, and I remember reading it aloud often to my younger brothers and sister.

I was reminded of Pierre this week while reading Kathleen Norris’s Acedia & Me. She explains that “acedia” is a Greek word meaning “a non-caring state.” She cites the little boy Pierre as a textbook case of acedia, since the only thing he ever said was “I don’t care.”

But Pierre does eventually learn how to care. Kathleen Norris tells the stories of her own journey towards learning the importance of caring as well. I can identify with both of them.

I’ve written about it here on 43 Things.