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From certainty to mystery

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Today marks the beginning of my annual trip around the sun. In thinking about what could possibly lie ahead, I looked for inspiration to Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age.

Sixty-eight, it turns out, is a pretty sparse year for accomplishments.

At age 68, the English experimentalist William Crookes began investigating radioactivity and invented a device for detecting alpha particles. And at the same age, French President Charles de Gaulle, who resigned 12 years earlier out of impatience with party politics, made a political comeback.

I am neither a scientist nor a politician, so I don’t feel any great pressure to add my name to this list with some never-before-seen discovery or outstanding accomplishment.

Everyone is different. Our desires, energy, ambitions, setbacks, opportunities, values, and perspectives shift, grow, or diminish in different ways through the years. What we sought in our 20s usually differs markedly from the dreams of our 60s. As folksinger Carrie Newcomer wisely writes,

I’ve traveled through my history.
From certainty to mystery.
God speaks in rhyme in paradox.
This I know is true…

From certainty to mystery is a perfect description for my history. It is surprising just how much I’ve forgotten since I was sixteen and knew everything.

Now that I’m sixty-eight I worry much less about career and workplace accomplishments, focusing instead on living more fully in the wonder of this remarkable life. I try and take on the advice Mary Oliver has given to writers: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Birthdays are an especially good time to stop and pay attention. There are important lessons that are slowly revealed as one gets older; lessons I’ve either just discovered or have resurfaced in recent years. For instance:

  • Most of the time everything you need you already have. The rest of the time it doesn’t matter.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
  • Keep good company. Drop the complainers and drainers from your life. Draw energy and inspiration from the visionaries and creators.
  • Choose sympathy over outrage.
  • Life is too short to not enjoy the things you love. 
  • Be humble.
  • Gratitude goes a long, long way. 
  • The ordinary is nothing but extraordinary.

Like everyone else on this planet, I don’t know how much longer this life will last. If I’m like my mother, I have less than 52 weeks. If I am so fortunate as to live into my nineties like my father, I have about 1,000 weeks left.

‘Cause leaves don’t drop they just let go
And make a space for seeds to grow
And every season brings a change
A tree is what a seed contains
To die then live is life’s refrain

Whatever is left of the journey, I want to give up trying to control my life. In its place I want to embrace life’s paradox and liminality.*

And, yes, there are a few things I want to accomplish in whatever time is left. I want to enjoy more drinks and meals with friends. To be more generous with my time and talents. To work where I’m effective to support democracy, equality, and justice. To read more books. To smile more often. To continue to travel as long as I’m physically able. To walk more, and to walk more in nature. To listen more. To talk less. To make sure that the people I love and care about know that without question. To be gratefully aware, not just every day but every hour in a way that leads to true thankfulness.

To try to be nice, but always to be kind.

I can’t wait to see what’s ahead!

More to come…

DJB

*Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “There is nothing like paradox to take the scum off your mind.” I agree. And yes, liminal is my new favorite word (and I’m not alone). I first heard it used by Krista Tippett.

Image of street sign in Dundee by DJB

From the bookshelf: February 2023

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Each month my goal is to read five books on a variety of topics and from different genres. Here are the books I read in February 2023. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy.

The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise (2023) by Pico Iyer is both an external odyssey and an internal journey to paradise. In a series of memorable essays, Iyer takes the reader from “the wrathful Old Testament landscape of Broome, Australia,” and the mosques and gardens of Iran to the lakes of Kashmir and the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. In each he leads the reader with skillful and expressive descriptions of the physical places. But he also calls upon a rich array of literature to flesh out the meaning of these shrines while examining the conflicts — open and hidden — often found there. Paradise on earth is a paradox. Often located in unimaginably beautiful landscapes or containing great holy shrines, these cities and sites have also seen incalculable suffering. Perhaps that’s because we are looking in the wrong places, Iyer reminds us. In the words of Franciscan priest Richard Rohr: “Our goal in life is not to become more spiritual, but to become human.”

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman begins with the simple fact that we won’t live forever; 4,000 weeks, in fact, if we make it to 80. We all know this intellectually, but we buy into productivity gurus who push us to make almost infinitely ambitious plans. We are frenetically doing tasks instead of experiencing the wonder of life that is all around us. Burkeman, the self-described “recovering productivity geek”, reminds us of the truth behind the paradox of limitations: the more one confronts the facts of our limits — and works with them, rather than against them — the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes. Things just take the time they take. The sooner we accept that fact and admit that the level of control demanded by the efficiency experts will never be attained, the sooner we can live the only life we have more fully.

A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France (2023) by Janet Hulstrand is a delightful memoir where the author takes us from her grandmother’s hometown in Iowa to her current home in the French countryside. Janet is a long-time friend whose adventures include working as Caroline Kennedy’s editorial assistant and living in a gypsy caravan outside Paris. We learn much about Janet’s journey, including the complicated relationship with the two women who fueled her love for learning, exploration, and writing. In my blog post, I interview Janet about this testament to family and the writing life.  A Long Way from Iowa will interest those who seek to understand the people and places that shape the path they choose.

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (1991) by Eileen Spinelli is — to put it simply — the best Valentine’s Day book ever. Mr. Hatch is the loneliest man in town. He would leave his brick house at 6:30 sharp every morning to walk to the shoelace factory, where he worked. At lunchtime he would sit alone in the corner, eating his cheese and mustard sandwich and drinking a cup of coffee. Sometimes he brought a prune for dessert. But one Valentine’s Day Mr. Hatch discovers that he has a secret admirer. By book’s end, Mr. Hatch learns who loves him. And it is more wonderful than he ever imagined.

Dead Man’s Folly (1956) by Agatha Christie is a mystery where no one is quite what they seem. The owners of an estate in Devon are hosting a charity fete for the local village. They decide to stage a mock murder for their guests and ask the famous crime writer, Ariadne Oliver, to organize the hunt. After developing the plot and clues, Mrs. Oliver calls her old friend, the world-renowned, mustachioed Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, and asks him to join her for the party. Without a full understanding of the request, the self-proclaimed “greatest detective in the world” nonetheless accepts her invitation and arrives by train, where he learns that his friend feels something sinister is afoot. Her suspicions are confirmed on the day of the party when they find the young village woman who had been tapped as the victim in the drama actually murdered and lying in the boathouse — just as Mrs. Oliver’s plot had outlined. And that’s only the beginning of the puzzle!

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: Click on the month to see the books I read in January. Also check out my Ten tips for reading five books a month.

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles, blog posts, or books that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

Observations from … February 2023

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A summary of what was included on More to Come in the month of February. If you receive my monthly email update, you can skip this post.

Yes! We made it through February, which I’ve frequently called the longest month of the year. It turns out there’s some truth in that jest. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman calendar (c. 713 BC); originally, winter was considered a month-less period. So we can all be thankful that February is only 28 days…as opposed to almost 60!

We’ve covered a lot of ground in these four weeks, with the big milestone being the 1500th posting since More to Come was created in 2008. 1500 and counting gave me the opportunity to highlight the piece with the most views over that time as well as a favorite essay from each of the 15 years. With a word total over that time that tops 1.1 million, that’s a lot of words! If it’s any consolation, I don’t know anyone who reads them all. Not even Candice. She does, however, hear my opinions live and often provides real-time feedback. As a result, the worst ones never make it to you, dear readers.

Besides the milestone post, let’s take a look at what else caught my attention in February.

FIRST-EVER AUTHOR INTERVIEW TOPS MONTHLY MOST-VIEWED LIST

With the increased number of book reviews on More to Come (MTC), it was only a matter of time until I tried my hand at interviewing one of the authors of the 60+ books I now read each year. The first one, where I interviewed author (and friend) Janet Hulstrand about her new memoir A Long Way from Iowa, was a big hit with readers. Check out The best journeys are the long ones to learn about the complicated relationship Janet had with the two women who fueled her love for learning, writing, and exploration; understand how she handled challenging parts of her own story in crafting her memoir; and get a whiff of her adventures, from serving as Caroline Kennedy’s editorial assistant to living in a gypsy caravan outside Paris.

THINGS THAT TICKLED MY FANCY

Over the course of February I also wrote three posts to keep abreast of what’s happening in today’s world and in my life.

First, the funeral of a treasured family friend led me to consider some of the control issues I’ve had throughout my life. I wrote in Letting go that this was the funeral we should all aspire to, as it included a sublime cello solo, more laughter than tears, reflections that one wished went on longer, and bourbon at the reception. While my friend and her family suggested that she had control issues, I think that the outpouring of love that came forth at the funeral was the result of Jo giving up control to serve others.

I’ll see you at the ground-breaking was a summation of thoughts (mine and some opinion writers) about the success of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in capturing his vision that “grows the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down.” Don’t believe everything you think is an essay on the need to think slow, in order to recognize harmful myths and help build constructive stories that support all Americans.

CELEBRATING MUSICIANS OF COLOR DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH

In honor of Black History Month, I have been exploring the work of musicians of color who are reclaiming their musical heritage while taking us forward musically and socially. This year’s series featured terrific young artists, some of which were new to me. Take some time to visit:

  • The hero of my own story with the singer, songwriter, poet, and activist Allison Russell was technically posted in January…but it really did kick off this series.
  • The authenticity of Kaia Kater looks at the work of this talented young musician who brings influences and history from Canada, Grenada, and Appalachia into her music.
  • A new kind of American troubadour featuring Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun. Her music was a revelation, and I had a couple tell me later that they couldn’t get enough of her music.

In addition, just a reminder that during the MLK weekend, I also featured the work of Ruthie Foster, which should be included in this overall celebration. One regular reader said he was so taken with her music that he went through and listened to them twice. Check out all these amazing musicians!

AND JUST THE TYPICAL ECLECTIC GROUP OF BOOKS

Yes, the books I read in February covered a number of my personal interests, and I hope you’ll find one (or more) that piques yours.

  • In search of paradise by Pico Iyer is both an external odyssey and an internal journeyas he explores a number of our holiest, yet very troubled, sites of paradise all around the globe. A fascinating and mind-expanding voyage.
  • Happy Valentine’s Day includes my all-time-favorite Valentine’s story. When Mr. Hatch learns the identity of his secret admirer, it is more wonderful than he could have imagined.
  • For those who just can’t keep up with everything on the to-do list, check out Things just take the time they take. Oliver Burkeman, a self-described “recovering productivity geek”,has written a thoughtful and provocative book that encourages us to embrace the paradox of limitations, stop frenetically doing tasks, and begin to really experience the wonder of the life that is all around us.
  • For my monthly murder mystery book, I read Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly. One fun fact you’ll discover in Piecing together the puzzle: the estate in the story is based on Christie’s own holiday house, which is now owned by the British National Trust!
  • Also, as a bonus look ahead, I ask readers to picture a Jewish academician, an Anglican historian, and a Catholic seeker walking into a bar. No, this is not the start of a bad joke. Those are the authors ― highlighted in an Ash Wednesday post ― that I’ll be reading this year as part of A Lenten reading practice.

CONCLUSION

Thanks, as always, for reading. As you travel life’s highways, do your best to treat others with kindness, undertake some mindful walking every day, recognize the incredible privilege that most of us have, and think about how to put that privilege to use for good. Women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, immigrants, and others can feel especially vulnerable…because they are. Finally, work hard for justice and democracy because the fight never ends.

More to come…

DJB

You can follow More to Come by going to the small “Follow” box that is on the right-hand column of the site (on the desktop version) or at the bottom right on your mobile device. It is great to hear from readers, and if you like them feel free to share these posts on your own social media platforms. 

For the January 2023 summary, click here.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Letting go

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A multitude of stories, experiences, and perspectives mix together in the rich stew we call life. We can revel in that stew, feasting on the wonder of it all. But paradoxically, in order to really live we have to let go of trying to control all that goes into the soup pot.

Yes, control issues have been on my mind in recent weeks.

When a colleague once told me that she was not engaging others on a particular project, the reason given was “I don’t trust them to do the job to the standard I want.” On one level her reasoning made sense to me. For years I battled the personal urge to be overprotective of everything from my work product to my schedule to my friendships. I still find myself slipping all too easily into old habits.

But thoughts on how much we actually control surfaced recently at the funeral for a treasured friend. Despite the fact that Jo wrote her own obituary (control issues, noted her family), the hundreds who gathered to celebrate her life most frequently shared stories of how she let go of the impulse to control when it mattered most in order to serve others and to simply enjoy life. She did it to the end, showing us not only how to live but how to die. Jo was fond of quoting poet Mary Oliver’s I Worried with its clear-eyed resolution:

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Letting go of control is hard. Really hard. With all the anxiety and pressure in today’s world, the tendency is to gather all we think we must do and hold on tight. But the fact is that we don’t have that much control. We may act as if we do, but our time will not stretch on indefinitely even though we work, plan, and live as if that’s the case. It is the desire to control, to try and ensure that our efforts will always be successful, that actually restricts us. When we open our eyes to how life really works — when we pay attention, in other words — we come to at least see, if not fully accept, the paradox of limitations. Only when we let go of the need to control do our lives become more productive, meaningful, and joyful. When we let go of the need to control, we can more easily accept — and even rejoice in — the life we are given. We open ourselves to seeing that our days are exceptional even when they are ordinary.

Jo built bridges between people. To do that, you have to give up some measure of control. When you put your trust in others and work at reconciliation and collaboration, you don’t get to make all the decisions. You lose the illusion of control. The chance exists that something won’t happen in the hoped for manner.

Yet there is a transformation that comes from letting go. Too many funerals are all about heavenly transactions, as if we think we’re still in control. Jo’s spoke, instead, to transformation. Hers, ours, and the worlds.

And what a funeral it was! We should all aspire to have such a wonderful sendoff. One where hundreds of family members, friends, and colleagues from most of the decades of your life make the effort to gather and celebrate your time in this world. Where there is a sublime cello solo to calm the spirit. Where there are plenty of tears, yes, but there is so much more laughter. Where a daughter gives a remembrance and everyone is sad that it couldn’t be longer. Where those speaking quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mary Oliver, Steven Charleston, Cornell West, the Buddha, and Loudon Wainwright III because those were the voices you listened to in life. Where your favorite brand of bourbon — good bourbon — is served at the reception.

In trying to hang on to control, we too often forget about what really matters. In life, the journey is much more important than the destination. Control is about power and certainty. Control is about trying to shape the destination you think you want.

Seeking, on the other hand, is a journey not of certainty but of mystery. Seeking brings transformation, as we come to live the only life we have more fully.

The job of cook — the one who puts all of life’s pieces together with a recipe often incomprehensible to us — is already taken. Seeking accepts this fact. Instead of attempting to control something outside our power, seeking permits us to revel in and savor the flood of zesty, bold, sturdy, and unpredictable flavors that feed our souls in life’s abundant and wondrous stew.

Here’s to you, Jo. Thanks for touching so many with your love during a life well lived. May you rest in peace.

More to come…

DJB

Image from Pixabay

The Black National Anthem

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I originally published this post under the title Lift Every Voice and Sing in 2020 to honor Juneteenth. For the last Saturday in this year’s Black History Month, I am reposting it here in a lightly edited form.

In honor of Black History Month 2023, I am exploring the work of musicians of color who are reclaiming their musical heritage while taking us forward musically and socially. The first in this year’s series (a preview) featured Allison Russell. Others featured Kaia Kater, Joy Oladokun. and Liz Vice. For the MLK weekend, I featured the work of Ruthie Foster.

With words by James Weldon Johnson and music by his brother John, Lift Every Voice and Sing was written at the turn of the 20th century, a time when Jim Crow laws were beginning to take hold across the South and Blacks were looking for an identity. In a way that was both gloriously uplifting and starkly realistic, it spoke to the history of the dark journey of African Americans. “It allows us to acknowledge all of the brutalities and inhumanities and dispossession that came with enslavement, that came with Jim Crow, that comes still today with disenfranchisement, police brutality, dispossession of education and resources,” Shana Redmond — author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora — says. “It continues to announce that we see this brighter future, that we believe that something will change.”

Lift ev’ry voice and sing

‘Til earth and heaven ring

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the list’ning skies

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on ’til victory is won

Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer

I came to Lift Every Voice and Sing later in life. But when I did I had the privilege of learning the song and its history directly from one of the foremost scholars in African American gospel music, the late Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer, at a 1992 music conference in North Carolina. Dr. Boyer was the general editor of 1993’s Lift Every Voice and Sing II: An African American Hymnal for the Episcopal Church. I was fortunate to be a part of a group that he led in his week-long workshop on African American gospel music. It was life changing.

The version I learned is the one from the hymnal that you hear in churches and concerts, such as seen here from late November 2016 — an especially auspicious time — at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Stony the road we trod

Bitter the chastening rod

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died

Yet with a steady beat

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered

Out from the gloomy past

‘Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

There are many popular arrangements of the song and I’ll only highlight a few. An all-star version from 1990 with Melba Moore features Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, The Clark Sisters, Freddie Jackson, Anita Baker, Bobby Brown, Howard Hewett, Take 6, Stephanie Mills, BeBe & CeCe Winans and Jeffrey Osborne.

Beyoncé famously sang the anthem’s first verse in her 2019 Beychella concert.

For an earlier generation, enjoy the great Ray Charles from 1972.

And finally, in a recording uploaded in the midst of the pandemic and with the heightened focus on racial injustice, Nicole Heaston gathered 65 Black opera singers accompanied by Kevin J. Miller and conducted by Damien Sneed to sing Roland Carter’s arrangement of the Black National Anthem. As Ms Heaston says, “This song expresses the strength and resilience of the Black spirit during this time of turmoil and reflection.” It is one of the most moving versions I’ve ever heard.

God of our weary years

God of our silent tears

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light

Keep us forever in the path, we pray

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee

Shadowed beneath Thy hand

May we forever stand

True to our God

True to our native land

I’d vote tomorrow to have The Star Spangled Banner replaced as our anthem by This Land Is Your Land along with Lift Every Voice and Sing. Until that glorious day arrives, listen or sing along and remember that Black Lives Matter.

More to come…

DJB

Image of James Weldon Johnson working at his desk.

A Lenten reading practice

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A Jewish academician, an Anglican historian, and a Catholic seeker walk into a bar.

This isn’t the start of a bad joke. Instead, you have the three authors that I’m taking on for my reading practice during the season of Lent. I read everywhere, so some of my time spent with these books will, no doubt, take place in establishments that serve adult beverages.*

Today, the first of the forty days of Lent, is known as Ash Wednesday. Its name comes from the custom of placing blessed ashes on the forehead of worshipers at services in churches, transit stops, coffee shops, and other places both traditional and quirky across the globe.

Ash Wednesday, in all seriousness, is where the symbolism of our mortality is the most overt and graphic during the liturgical year. I’ve heard it described as the church’s celebration of finitude.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Words spoken at the imposition of ashes, Episcopal Book of Common Prayer

The message that we have the human disease and will die doesn’t get any more direct.

For Christians, Lent is a season of repentance, fasting, and self-reflection. In some traditions, believers “give up” something for Lent. The more modern approach is to take on something for this journey, which is the same length of time that Jesus spent in the wilderness. In our time of so much anxiety and uncertainty, perhaps it is enough to give people the opportunity to just stop, pause, reflect, and try to breathe again.

So, back to our three authors.

This year, over the course of these forty days, I am going to take on the reading of three books that focus on difficult questions, doubt, and the intersection of faith and history. My guides for this journey are three writers I admire who come at faith from very different perspectives.

  • The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine promises to showcase the wit, wisdom, and first-class scholarship of this self-described “unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who until 2021 taught New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt.” As one of the blurbs on the cover suggests, Levine “goes for the doozies.” The first is that favorite of prosperity gospel preachers everywhere, “Sell what you own.”** I can’t wait!
  • The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, takes the seven phrases Jesus spoke from the cross and considers them through the lens of the intersection of faith and history. Lent is the season leading up to Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter. There’s no better individual to help us think through these intersections than the Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral.
  • Amen? Questions for a God I Hope Exists by Julia Rocchi is a new book from my friend and former colleague that is “a collection of prayers and essays for practicing penitents and devoted doubters.” I have read a number of Julia’s essays through the years and know that this new work from an observant Catholic will be thoughtful, engaging, and empathetic. My review of Julia’s book will feature my second author interview of the year, and I can’t wait to chat with her about Amen? and what she’s learned in the writing process.

UPDATE: I’ve joined another reading group, and we’re taking on the book The Cross and the Lynching Tree by the influential African American theologian James H. Cone for Lent. So, add a fourth to the list as well!

Please feel free to read along with me during this season. If these works don’t appeal to you, I’m highlighting three other books I’ve read over the past couple of years in the hope that you will find something that piques your interest here.

Short Stories by Jesus: The enigmatic parables of a controversial rabbi (2014) by Amy-Jill Levine is the highly praised study of the parables of Jesus written in an easy-to-read style spiced with humor. Levine helps her readers understand the parables in the same way as their original audiences did. She notes that these stories are less about revealing something new and more about tapping into “our memories, our values, and our deepest longings.”

The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, faith, and food justice (2021), by Christopher Carter speaks to the clear, Christian ethical basis for a new system of food justice. “Our foodways are an expression of our identity, a way of maintaining connections to our ancestors and our ancestral homelands; our foodways are personal and communal, emotional and habitual.” This book is a timely reminder of the often-oppressive underpinnings of our broken food system.

Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday (1991) by Gunilla Norris looks at the tasks we do — from awakening in the morning to locking the door at nightfall — and puts them in the context of living in place. “How we hold the simplest of our tasks,” Norris writes, “speaks loudly about how we hold life itself.”

May you find time for a meaningful season of self-reflection, no matter how that evolves in your life.

More to come…

DJB

*If you absolutely must have a bad joke, here you go: A priest, a rabbit, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender asks the rabbit, “what’ll you have?” The rabbit says, “I dunno. I’m only here because of Autocorrect.”

**Snark alert

The Weekly Reader links to written works I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash

Piecing together the puzzle

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At one point, the famed detective is sitting “in a square chair, in front of the square fireplace in the square room of his London flat. In front of him were various objects that were not square; that were instead violently and almost impossibly curved.” Each individually looked to be “improbable, irresponsible, and wholly fortuitous. In actual fact, of course, they were nothing of the sort.”

Yes, Hercule Poirot was home, five weeks after leaving a crime scene without having solved the murder, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

Dead Man’s Folly (1956) by Agatha Christie is a mystery where no one is quite what they seem. The owners of an estate in Devon, Sir George and Lady Stubbs, are hosting a charity fete for the local village. Along with local friends and visitors, they decide to stage a mock murder and ask the famous crime writer, Ariadne Oliver, to organize the hunt. After developing the plot and clues, Mrs. Oliver calls her old friend, the world-renowned, mustachioed Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, and asks him to join her for the party. Without a full understanding of the request, the self-proclaimed “greatest detective in the world” nonetheless accepts her invitation and arrives by train, where he learns that his friend feels something sinister is afoot.

In fact, her suspicions are confirmed on the day of the party when Poirot and his friend find the young village woman who had been tapped as the victim in the drama actually murdered and lying in the boathouse — just as Mrs. Oliver’s plot had outlined. The grounds are filled with hundreds of villagers and young people from a nearby hostel, Lady Stubbs is mysteriously missing and may be a second victim of the murderer, several of those who knew the plot outlines are acting very strange, and the local police inspector is no closer than Poirot in figuring out what happened and why. And yet, as the detective says to Mrs. Folliat, the resident of the gatehouse whose family once owned the estate before she lost her husband and sons in the war, “Remember that, Madame. I, Hercule Poirot, do not give up.”

As Christie writes, “It was a very typical exit line.”

Events continue to unfold, but the answer seems no closer. An old, local ferryman, who had spoken to Poirot during his visit, falls off his boat and drowns, an occurrence the police determine is an accident after a night of drinking. Poirot is not so certain. Sir George returns to his house in London. Lady Stubbs has not reappeared, and her body has not been found.

Sitting back in his London flat, Poirot is attempting to put together the pieces of the puzzle before him and the one in his mind from the events five weeks earlier. He is an older man in this story, and many of the younger characters do not know of his reputation. Nonetheless, Poirot understands his skill at reading the criminal mind better than any other, and he is determined to solve the mystery. His fingers find an improbable piece of dark gray in the puzzle that fits in the blue sky and all of a sudden, he realizes that it is part of an airplane.

“Yes,” murmured Poirot to himself, “that is what one must do. The unlikely piece here, the improbable piece there, the oh-so-rational piece that is not what it seems; all of these have their appointed place, and once they are fitted in, eh bien! there is an end of the business! All is clear. All is — as they say nowadays — in the picture.”

Speaking to the Inspector in his flat, the detective notes that “Mrs. Folliat knows a great deal that we do not.” When the Inspector and Chief Constable protest that Poirot’s thesis is “impossible” and they know it is impossible, he replies, “Oh no, it is not impossible at all! Listen, and I will tell you.”

Mrs. Folliat and others in Devon are surprised to see Poirot return. It only takes a few key interviews, some on-site sleuthing, and then the detective sits with the key individual who knows what happened and accurately describes the circumstances of the three murders. That individual thanks Poirot for coming to describe what the detective now knows to be true and asks him to leave. The story ends with: “There are some things that one has to face quite alone. . . .”

Greenway House in Devon, the holiday home of Agatha Christie, now owned by The National Trust (credit: National Trust)

In reading the backstory for the publication of Dead Man’s Folly, I learned that Christie originally wrote it in 1954 with the intention of donating the proceeds to a fund set up to buy stained glass windows for her local church at Churston Ferrers. She filled the story with references to local places, including her own home of Greenway, but then decided to expand the novella into a full-length novel, Dead Man’s Folly, which was published two years later. Christie donated a Miss Marple story (Greenshaw’s Folly) to the church fund instead.

The country house in Dead Man’s Folly was inspired by Agatha Christie’s own holiday home, Greenway House in Devon, which looks over the River Dart. Now owned and managed by the National Trust, it was also used in the filming of the 2013 TV adaptation of the novel.

So much of life is working to figure out the puzzle. There are many things we do not know and will never know. But unlike in life, the fun of the mystery novel is knowing that in the hands of a wonderful writer and storyteller like Agatha Christie, all will be revealed. Eh bien, mon vieux.

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: I am on a mission to read one murder mystery each month during 2023. Click here to read the review of And Then There Were None.

Photo by Gokhan Polat on Unsplash

Liz Vice’s road to redemption

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In honor of Black History Month, I am exploring the work of musicians of color who are reclaiming their musical heritage while taking us forward musically and socially. The first three in this year’s series featured Allison Russell, Kaia Kater, and Joy Oladokun. For the MLK weekend, I featured the work of Ruthie Foster. Today we’ll celebrate the music of Liz Vice.

Liz Vice is a musician best known for her gospel, soul, and R&B-infused sound. The Bluegrass Situation (BGS), among other reviewers, has noted her debt to earlier gospel-based civil rights advocates such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, Mavis Staples, the Staples Singers, the Ward Sisters, Aretha Franklin, and Mahalia Jackson.

We often forget how much religious music was infused in the counterculture back in the 1960s, and as the BBC mentions in a great article about the era, “The music of the black church was infusing and inspiring the political consciousness of folk music; gospel was no longer just for the religious but the foundation for much ‘60s protest.” 

Vice’s breakthrough album came in 2015 and is entitled, There’s A Light. Raised in Portland, Oregon, and now living in Brooklyn, Vice — as Glide noted in a review —

…has performed with artists such as Joss Stone, Blind Boys of Alabama, Boz Scaggs, and Lake Street Dive. No matter how large the venue, Vice’s genuine approach to her artistry and playful interaction with the audience makes everyone feel as if they are at home sitting on the couch, witnessing a friend sing their heart out.

Here’s the title track from that first album, performed during the Portland Soundcheck sessions.

2018’s Save Me was Vice’s next album, and the title track is a powerful song that blends her beautiful voice with the bass of the piano and the calming, ethereal sound of the strings. It was featured on the CBS series The Equalizer, which generated another group of Liz Vice fans.

In this temporary world, I tired out my tongue / Empty conversations with the enemy’s lies / Which way to go but onward, soldier, know we leave inside / So like a storm, I’m moving forward / Like an eagle in flight [Chorus] Save me from myself / Release me from my own hell / Save me from myself / Release me from my own hell

The song Fancy Feet celebrates “the hope and love of living plainly without expectations or affectations”

I clean up really nice when I need to / I’m no princess crystal slippers ain’t my thang / Oh I feel fancy when my feet are runnin’ wild and free.

The official music video is a partnership with Vice and her friends at Bridge of Hope Africa Ministries (BOHAM). As Vice says, after BOHAM graciously agreed to participate, “in return I thought it would be super fun to allow people to see the beautiful work that BOHAM is doing in Uganda.”

BGS described Vice as someone “who is bringing her own vision of social justice and the powerful, playful bounce of soul back to modern religious music.” You can experience that vision in See the Day, which came out in 2020 and shows Vice bringing those social justice issues to the forefront of her work.

I wanna see the day when justice rolls / Like a mighty river floods out of control / May that day be today when together we say / Let justice, let justice roll

This Land is Your Land is one of my favorite songs, and I wasn’t sure that I felt a rewrite was necessary. But as Vice told Glide:

“I sat down and re-wrote lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land” with my friends Paul Zach and Orlando Palmer just one day shy of the Unite The Right Rally one year anniversary. The purpose was to write lyrics that told the origin story of America. There are a lot of reasons to celebrate being American but one thing that must first be talked about is the history. Healing can’t begin without first acknowledge the gaping wound created by the colonization, the mass genocide of the Indigenous people, and the enslavement of African slaves. There is still much work to be done,” says Vice.

And after I listened to her moving revision, I understand Vice’s important perspective on the need to hear origin stories in everything — even our iconic songs.

I want to end this sampling of Liz Vice’s music with her latest release: Promise Land.

So I’ll press on until we make it to the Promise Land / I have been up the mountain and back again / Oh my eyes have seen the glory and I heard God’s plan / I’ll press on until we make it to the Promise Land.

Vice has always had a gift for storytelling that gets at the heart of living. As No Depression magazine noted,

The road to redemption is filled with uncertainty, doubt, self-deception, pain, and anguish, and even when you find salvation, there’s no guarantee that joy and love will erase completely the pain and doubt….Liz Vice walks the stony road to redemption, delivering tunes that celebrate the victory over the illusions that hold us down while acknowledging the heavy weight of self-doubt and missed opportunities for loving others that we bear.

Join her on this walk!

More to come…

DJB

Things just take the time they take

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We often push back against simple reality, living as if we are the masters of time. Our lives are filled with to-do lists that we’ll never complete, increasing the anxiety that is an all-too-common feature of 21st century living. As technology gives us the ability to work faster, we quickly fill up the time “saved” with more tasks. We become increasingly impatient when we can’t force life to keep the pace we’ve chosen.

Sound familiar? If so, realizing that if you live to be 80 years old, your life span will only total 4,000 weeks may be a good place to begin facing reality.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) by Oliver Burkeman begins with the simple fact that we won’t live forever. In the grand scheme of things, we won’t even live very long at all. We all know this intellectually, but we structure our lives and our priorities as if our time will stretch on indefinitely. While many of us have used up more than half of that 4,000-week allotment of time, we nonetheless buy into efficiency experts and productivity gurus who push us to make almost infinitely ambitious plans. If we stop to notice, we’ll see that we are frenetically doing tasks instead of experiencing the wonder of life that is all around us.

And why do we fail to make the best use of a small amount of time? Because to embrace a life with limits is to admit that we’re not superhuman; to acknowledge that we cannot master time. It is to accept the fact that we’re mortal, and that we’ll die. Probably sooner than we wish.

Burkeman, a self-described “recovering productivity geek”, tells us in this thoughtful book that we’ll only truly live the life we’re given when we accept those limits and understand our mortality; when we acknowledge we have “the human disease” and understand, as Kate Bowler has written, that there is simply no cure for being human.

The first half of Burkeman’s work is focused on facing “finitude” — how being human is bound up with our finite time. The details differ, but

We all recoil from the notion that this is it — that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at.

How do we deal with this challenge? If you’ve been paying attention to anything I’ve written over the past few years, you’ll not be surprised to find that Burkeman’s paradox of limitation rings true to me. The more one tries to manage time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more one confronts “the facts of finitude instead — and works with them, rather than against them — the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.”

We’ve all heard the Greek myth of Sisyphus who is punished for his arrogance by having to push an enormous boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down so he has to repeat the action for all eternity. Burkeman suggests that in the contemporary version, “Sisyphus would empty his inbox, lean back, and take a deep breath, before hearing a familiar ping: ‘You have new messages . . .'”

The book’s second half is structured to help the reader move “beyond control” to where we confront life on its terms, not ours. You’ll never be liberated. “And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.”

Burkeman isn’t suggesting that we shouldn’t plan for the future. That’s not the problem. “The problem — the source of all the anxiety — is the need that we feel … to be able to know that those efforts will prove successful.” We can’t know that things will turn out all right. The struggle for certainty, he writes, “is an intrinsically hopeless one.” And many spiritual traditions point this out. “Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place” cautions one of the founding texts of Taoism.

I have a spiritual mentor who is fond of saying, “the job of God is already taken.” Throughout this provocative book we learn how to mind our own business, which is the only thing we really control.

We are also taught to give up seeing everything we do in life as laying the groundwork for something else. Those caught up in the capitalistic world’s pressure to instrumentalize our time learn how breaking our days into billable hours saps meaning from our lives. Burkeman provides a much more satisfying — to my thinking — way to consider “living in the moment.” We’re always “living in the moment” he asserts. We never had any other option.

One of the most useful chapters focuses on the need to rediscover rest. We have seen the decline of pleasure since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Even in our time off we’re supposed to be “investing in our future.” But is work — especially in the modern capitalist model — the highest human calling? To fully inhabit the only life we ever get, we have to refrain from using every spare hour for personal growth. As one Marxist writer put it, we have the right to be lazy. Burkeman would add, we not only have the right, but we have the need to do so.

This book came to me via recommendations from high-powered and highly productive colleagues who are taking time mid-career to figure out what’s next. It is certainly an appealing book for that cohort, but also for the young student and professional as well as those of us who have already passed through the first two “thirds” of life. There is much for each of us to consider.

Things just take the time they take. The sooner we accept that fact and admit that the level of control demanded by the efficiency experts will never be attained, the sooner we can live the only life we have more fully.

More to come…

DJB

The Weekly Reader links to written works I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Image by annca from Pixabay

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Candice had selected a special book to take with her today to the Takoma school in DC where she tutors young children in reading. When I saw it, I smiled. It was the perfect choice.

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (1991) by Eileen Spinelli is — to put it simply — the best Valentine’s Day book ever. Mr. Hatch is the loneliest man in town. He would leave his brick house at 6:30 sharp every morning to walk to the shoelace factory, where he worked. At lunchtime he would sit alone in the corner, eating his cheese and mustard sandwich and drinking a cup of coffee. Sometimes he brought a prune for dessert.

Then one Saturday, the postman dropped off a mysterious package. Mr. Hatch didn’t normally receive much mail because he didn’t have any friends. But inside he found a big heart-shaped box tied up with a bow and filled with candy. The note with the package simply said, “Somebody loves you.”

Mr. Hatch had a secret admirer!

Over the course of the next few pages, Mr. Hatch is transformed. He takes the candy to share with his fellow workers at the factory. He helps out the men running the newspaper stand and the meat counter. He bakes brownies for the neighborhood kids. He even pulls out his old harmonica to play for backyard parties.

Suddenly, though, his mood changes. Only one other person knows why. But by book’s end, Mr. Hatch learns who loves him. And it is more wonderful than he ever imagined.

As I do virtually every time I read this story, I cried.

You can listen — and cry if you wish — to the story as told in this beautiful reading by Hector Elizondo.

Here’s wishing you a Valentine’s Day where you discover — and hear from — all those who love you.

Flowers for my Valentine…from a not-so-secret admirer

More to come…

DJB

Photo of abstract valentines by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash