Happy last day of March! It’s the warmest it has been all week and the sky is cloudy. Maybe it will rain. Here are some of the things that caught my eye in this last month:
“Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up. But the writing is a way of not allowing those things to destroy you.” John Edgar Wideman
For those of us who write to process things, this quote rings true. Writing is like a purge or a cut that lets out “bad blood”. We release our poisons and unwrap the cord that threatens to suffocate the heart. Pure release.
There are people who write very mechanically and in a calculated fashion. I have always found this to be so interesting. There is no right or wrong way. But for me, writing has always been emotional.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot
A solid reminder that our focus is often so much on clinging to the temporary, when we would be wise to trade off its importance for that which is eternal.
“It is the creative evolutionist, the Bergsonian or Shavian, or the Communist, who should tremble when the looks up at the night sky. For he really is committed to a sinking ship.” C.S. Lewis
This month, I have been reading a devotional made up of C.S. Lewis compilations called Preparing for Easter. I am an avid fan of C.S. Lewis since I was a child and my dad would read me the Narnia series before bed. He is a wise soul. This quote was more political in nature, but it drew my attention. C.S. Lewis was no stranger to war and conflict, and he had a lot of wise thoughts about it. Thoughts still relevant to today.
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” Ernest Hemingway
Wisdom from Hemingway that speaks for itself.
“Labels are a way of filing people. I resist closed boxes. The reason I resist closed boxes is nature does not deal in closed boxes. I really do believe we all contain multitudes.” Margaret Atwood (in conversation with Tim Ferriss)
I loved the Tim Ferriss-Margaret Atwood podcast. It was a gem. I believe in what Atwood expressed. No one of us is just one thing. It’s terribly boring. This is part of the reason why the topics on this site run the gamut. We truly contain multitudes.
“Perhaps, indeed, that is what ‘holy scripture’ really is– not a calm serene list of truths to be learned or commands to be obeyed, but a jagged book that forces you to grow up in your thinking as you grapple with it.” N.T. Wright
I just finished N.T. Wright’s book/biography on Paul. It truly expanded my vision on who Paul was, why he was how he was (his incredible courage, vulnerability, passion and how he was so misunderstood), and the Jewish worldview and how it connects to Christianity. The book has many incredible themes running through it. One is that Christianity was not a new and separate thing from Judaism. The early church did not see being a follower of Jesus as something separate from being Jewish. Instead, being a follower of Jesus was seen as the fulfillment of Judaism. It was Judaism’s fullest expression. The Messiah had come. God had kept His promise. I love in this quote how N.T. Wright forces us to look at Scripture perhaps differently than how we typically categorize the book. It’s not rounded, it’s jagged. The letters it contains are often written in a way that is not to instruct us plainly but to provoke us into new thinking and living. And in this process, we mature.
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway
This is a reminder to anyone who feels broken or is hurting.
For a good laugh, Steve Harvey’s DMV rant:
This piece on Charles Dickens (and his contemporaries).
It has been a busy month that at times felt fast and at times felt slow. Maybe we will get lucky here and April will be ushered in with warm rain. Wishing you a happy start to the new month. Keep thinking and walking toward the light.
xx
GABRIELA YARELIZ 