cultivate a discipline of beauty

I have begun a habit of occasionally sitting in front of the waterfall at my church, and soaking in the beauty. It is helpful to sit in a quiet place and let the meaningful parts of the church service settle in my mind.

woven into my schedule & priorities now.

I want to keep doing it.

& my sleep patterns are reflecting that. I’m a bit of a zombie today.

I will be minimizing my 43T time for a week, maybe more, while I focus hard on work (both my full-time job & freelance) & pulling together tax records for last year (more complicated than usual).

In the next week & a half I do have two wonderful concert dates with my husband to look forward to, plus a poetry reading (where I may participate in an open mic) &, of course, the Chicagoan 43Ters game night. So it won’t be all grim by any means.

Onward, she says a bit limply.

Hi! I haven’t been on 43things in months! Don’t know where the time went. But, reading your writings here made me feel a bit sad and realize that I missed touching base with you.
I’m happy that your job is going well. I’m on the job search trail again, and hope to have some offers soon. Many interviews; two more scheduled tomorrow. So, something should come of all my efforts soon.
I think my cultivation of beauty ought to include a daily stop off at this page to see what others are cultivating for themselves.
My beauty today is my children. They are out of school for the next three weeks, as we have year round schedules. The weather contributed to a lovely playtime outside today and they were all so sweet to watch! Even seeing them make mud pies and “paint” with the mud was fun. Helps us remember that sometime we need to also cultivate fun and serendipity, by getting down and dirty! My little baby girl, almost three, all covered in mud and doing her “painting” was a beautiful thing to see!
God Bless you all today.

about this goal, because my schedule has just become more human. Last weekend I finished the last long-lingering freelance project accepted before I started my new job. From now on I’ll continue to do some freelance work, but they will be short books, or articles; I am determined to keep work from crowding my life the way it has for so long.

Today was the first Saturday in a long, long, long time that I didn’t need to work on an editing project. I slept in, then made a big breakfast for us to eat together. Then it was hard to figure out what I most wanted to do with the day! There are many things (including several of those listed here) that I’ve been setting aside to await the day that the work pile had finally diminished—& now that it’s here, it’s hard to decide what to focus on first.

I actually spent a good while playing a word game! :-) Then I sorted some papers & did some laundry. Took next steps on several items I came upon in the paper pile.

It’s amazing & wonderful not to be so nose-to-the-grindstone. However, I do hope to regain needed focus on my various creative pursuits. Tomorrow afternoon, I will start a new picture-book illustration.

Another aspect of focus is being rested. I read a bit more of You on a Diet today, & something clicked. It says that when you’re short on sleep, you tend to crave sweets & other carbs. I have had massive cravings this winter: every day at the office I have a painful yearning for chocolate. I’ve gone down to the café to indulge the craving only a few times, but in the evenings we’ve had dessert more than usual too. I think the craving reflects the fact that I’m not getting enough sleep (it’s been 6-7 hrs most nights instead of 8).

And winter has been rather severe for a few weeks, & because of commuting I’m out slogging in the snow & intense cold more than I used to. It’s been hard on me; I haven’t actually fallen into depression, but I’ve been skirting it. I need adequate sleep to return me to full juiciness.

One more reason: I’ve been working on poems faithfully every day during the second half of my morning commute, & here & there some good stuff has come out of it, but there’s nothing so far like the lush, highly sensory pieces I used to write during evening sessions. I’m not really a morning person, & on top of that I’ve nearly always been sleepy. I need to find my way to lush morning poems, & I think that way runs alongside the path to a full night’s sleep every night.

We shall see. For now my quest for a life of beauty will take me to the basement to fold clean laundry, & then to bed so that I can be fully awake tomorrow. :-)

http://www.alexandrastoddard.com/
When I read your goal of cultivating a discipline of beauty, I knew I wanted it as one of my goals. Over a year ago, when I went to my first counseling session with my current counselor, she asked me what I wanted more of in my life. I told her I wanted more beauty in my life. This goal sounds like a very worth-while goal to work toward.

Years ago, I read a book, “Living a Beautiful Life,” by Alexandra Stoddard. I still have it. I think it is time to take it off the shelf, dust it off, and start reading it again!

This poem arrived in my e-mailbox today from the Writer’s Almanac, & I keep going back to read it again. It’s by Michael Simms, from his collection The Happiness of Animals.

The Summer You Learned to Swim

for Lea

The summer you learned to swim
was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself.
In May you were afraid to put your face in the water
But by August, I was standing in the pool once more
when you dove in, then retreated to the wall saying
You forgot to say Sugar! So I said Come on Sugar, you can do it
and you pushed off and swam to me and held on
laughing, your hair stuck to your cheeks—
you hiccupped with joy and swam off again.

And I dove in too, trying new things.
I tried not giving advice. I tried waking early to pray. I tried
not rising in anger. Watching you I grew stronger—
your courage washed away my fear.

All day I worked hard thinking of you.
In the evening I walked the long hill home.
You were at the top, waving your small arms,
pittering down the slope to me and I lifted you high
so high to the moon. That summer all the world
was soul and water, light glancing off peaks.
You learned the turtle, the cannonball, the froggy, and the flutter
And I learned to stand and wait for you to swim to me.

on my day to really breathe. I have been getting my bedtimes in sync with the new schedule. It hasn’t been easy. Ideally I should go to bed at 10:00 & rise at 6:00 to make the trains I’d like to make & beat the worst train rush. So far I often don’t make it till midnight, but I have hopes of nudging myself gradually to the earlier time.

I’m writing poetry much more regularly, on the train. This week I will also use train time to write a long-overdue review of two really excellent books about Colombia. The other thing the train is great for: delicious reading (on the way home when I’m tired!). So the blessed trains of Chicago are now part of my emerging discipline of beauty.

Haven’t done any visual art for a while; that’s mainly because of the leftover editing project that is eating up every spare moment except for Sundays & some prior evening commitments. Thank God, this situation will not last indefinitely.

Eating well is also part of my discipline; I hadn’t included it in my original list because when I worked at home I had more time to cook good slow food. Today, after coming home from church, I chopped a bunch of veggies & put them in a removable crockpot dish with seasonings. I put the dish in the fridge, & tomorrow morning before I leave I’ll add water for the soup, stick the dish back in the crockpot & turn it on. I love coming home to a food-fragrant house! I also had time to bake a yummy fruit crisp with CSA raspberries & pears from our neighbor’s backyard. This food will feed us several dinners this week.

Now I’m off to meet thexder & a couple of her other friends for a couple of hours at the MCA!

& charge today—I intend to burrow all the way through the current manuscript, or at least nearly all the way through. I have nearly 150 single-spaced pages to go, but they are relatively clean. No distractions allowed! So if any of my 43T friends notice that I am cheering or commenting past 12:15 (silent moment for peace, then posting a comment), please give me a virtual boo!

EDIT: Of course I mean 12:15 MY time, which shows up as 10:15 on the Pacific time posted here. Also, I noticed the mixed-animal metaphor of my initial sentence, above (charging bull & burrowing mole), but I rather liked it. :-)

Hi Ruth… did you know that our name(I’m Ruth too!) means compassionate and beautiful in the Hebrew? From your last post, I can see you’re spread pretty thin. Seems like it might be time to discipline yourself to a some down time. Like a nice, hot tub soak every evening. Or some time to just breath and maybe pray. Or sitting down and just listening to your favorite quiet music. I know the feeling of being pulled many directions and I have had to really make it a habit to give myself more care. I know you can too.
Congrats on your new job!