Sunday Musings

One Saturday morning about a month ago, I attended a "soul vacation" sponsored by my church.
During the course of the day, we were given different activities to do, and each time we were to get away by ourselves to complete the activity.  All the activities were centered around the story of the woman who interrupts Jesus' dinner and breaks the jar of expensive nard and pours it over his head. (Luke 14:3-9) Extravagant love or  waste?  Many guests think she is foolish for "wasting" the nard when it could have been sold and the money used to feed the poor.

Late in the morning we were asked to select a block of clay and go create our own jar.  We were given about 30 or 40 minutes to complete the task.  I was grumbling to myself about why we given so long a time to make a little jar out of clay, when I knew it would only take 5 or 10 minutes.  Well, needless to say, I am not an artist and had never really used this type of clay before.  It was still in a cellophane wrapper.  I chose a  green block.  Well, I have never felt clay like this.  It was hard as a rock, and unmoldable.  I squeezed it and beat it and tried to warm it up, but it was hard to get that unmoldable clay to warm up to my touch.  As I sat there for 10, 15 minutes trying to mold my clay it became so obvious to me how I am just like that clay.  I had often sang the old hymn, "you are the potter, I am the clay"  but never did it have more meaning to me than it did at this moment as I sat squeezing that lump of clay.

I saw how hard it is to soften unused clay and how hard it is to mold into anything.  When I am apart from God, this is how I must feel in his hands.  He is the potter, but I am hard, unmoldable clay.  As I spend time in his presence and let him work with me, I become softer, easier to mold.  I see that the more I stay in his hands the more moldable I will become  and that will allow me to be molded more into the person He wants me to be.  When I stay out of his hands, I grow hard again.  I need to spend time in his hands to be softer, more pliable, easier to mold.

Why don't I do that?

Have thine own way Lord, have thine own way

Thou art the potter, I am the clay

Mold me and make me after thy will

While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Summer Reading

Don't you just love the lazy days of summer reading?  Summer always reminds me of the long days of summer vacation of my childhood.  When the days stretched out endlessly, when it is so hot and humid there was little else to do but curl up with a good book and a tall glass of sweet iced tea.  I remember going to the library every week to get my weekly stash of books.  Among all the guilty pleasures, I would get one book on a random college reading list I had found.  This was back in the day when even aspiring students did not have a summer reading list.    I remember reading Wuthering Heights the summer before my Senior year in High School during a late afternoon thunderstorm.  I remember sitting on the front porch re-reading Gone With The Wind with my niece.  I struggled through Brave New World.


But I digress.  Reading has been such a big part of my life in every season, but especially during the summer.  This summer is no different.  I have found a common theme in several books I have been reading or plan to read this summer.  These books revolve around the concept of memory loss.  The first one that I read was Before I go to Sleep by S. J. Watson.
Christine wakes up every morning having no memory of the day before.  She doesn't know the man sleeping beside her.  When she looks in the mirror she screams when she sees her face as it is much older than she expects to see.  Each day is the same - trying to discover who she is and then she forgets everything once she goes to sleep and the next day begins in a similar fashion.  Working with a Doctor, she begins to keep a journal, and she hides it each day.  The Dr. must call her every day and tell her to go look for her journal.  


The next book that I had in my TBR (to be read) stack was What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty.  Alice is a 39 year old super mom, who falls off her spin bike and suffers a  concussion.  She wakes up thinking she is 29 and pregnant with her first child.  She had no memory of the last 10 years.  While a lighter read than Before I go to Sleep, it gives one a chance to think about the choices we make in life and how gradually we may become people we don't even like.  The 29 year old Alice does not like the Alice she is at 39.  She discovers she is in the process of divorcing the husband she adored at age 29, and she can't stand most of her new friends, and something seems to be amiss with her relationship with her sister.  


I then picked up The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey.  Imagine my surprise when I found out the protagonist wakes up naked on a beach in Maine with no memory of who he is or how he got there.  He finds a BMW parked nearby with a CA registration in the name of Daniel Hayes.  He soon discovers he is being hunted by the police.  This is slightly reminiscent of The Bourne Identity written 30 years ago.  I adored that book when I first read it long before it had been made into movies.  Daniel Hayes is certainly no spy.  He travels back to CA to try and put his life back together.  


Lastly, the 4th book is one that is getting much press this summer, and one that I have not started -- Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante.  This book has received many excellent reviews and has been recommended by many.  The protagonist, Dr. Jennifer White, is an orthopedic surgeon in the beginning stages of dementia.  Can't wait to get to this one!


I find it strange that these 4 vastly different authors were all writing books dealing with memory loss and they were all published within a month of each other.  Yet they are very different from each other.  


Have you found any themes in your summer reading?  Go pour yourself a glass of ice cold lemonade or tea and curl up with a book.  You don't have to be at the beach to enjoy a book this summer.