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How to Read More Books That Matter

read more books that matter

I always want to read more books. If I go too long without exploring times past or hearing new-to-me ideas or happening upon intriguing fields of study I get kind of pent up and cranky. It’s like my brain decides it’s been caged up too long and revolts.

It took me a very long time to notice this. And really, I only figured it out after repeatedly watching the revolt make a big fat mess in the middle of my favorite relationships. (Sorry about that.)

But it’s not just reading more books that helps me be my better self. It’s reading more books of a certain type that makes the real difference. I love a quick movie-type read that has me page-turning through the early hours, but those usually don’t have the elements that let my wild-monkey-of-a-brain out for a run.

I bet you’re similar. It might not be histories and culture that let your brain play in just the right way, of course. For you it might be poetry, or engaging characters, or quantum physics, or spiritual memoirs, but I’m guessing there’s a difference in the soul-soothing for you between various types of books.

So how do we get more of these reads into our lives? 

One way that’s been working well for me lately is to make a list of topics I’m currently interested in reading about. I don’t mean a list of anything ever that in your wildest dreams you’d want to read about. I mean what’s on your mind right now.

Here are a few of the questions I use:

  • What book have I wanted to read but have been putting off?
  • What subject is on my mind a lot right now that might be better thought through with the input of an outsider?
  • What am I wrestling with right now that could use some encouragement?
  • What books have my friends been reading lately which have sparked my interest?

Assuming you’re reading regularly (and here’s a tip for jumping back on the reading bandwagon if you’re not), all you need to do is start referring to your list when you’re ready to begin a new book.

I’m a big fan of reading whatever a person feels like. It’s easier and more impactful that way. But choosing between books that we’ve already decided matter to us (rather than browsing that ever growing “to read” list) moves us toward books we feel like reading AND that matter in the broader scope of our lives.

I’ve been using my annual reading sub-goals as my list, and have had my best reading month in a long time. The books are timely and enjoyable but are also nurturing my mind and life in directions that are important to me.

What better books are on your list this year?

My One Major Goal for the New Year

My One New Year's Goal

I’m ready for a new year.

Twenty Fourteen was a monumental year for which I’m so thankful. We went all in with our business and all in with a new life direction. For the second time, we parted with (nearly) all our possessions and moved internationally. We endured periods of waiting and severe unknowns and came out on the other side. It was exhilarating. And it was exhausting.

As I write, we live in an un-furnitured apartment and work in the highly-trafficked common area of a Home for abused and neglected kids. But our apartment has a lovely view and our work has real purpose and it’s obvious we’ve traded down and traded up simultaneously.

As 2015 dawns, we reach our 3-month anniversary here in Lebanon. And I need the re-centering and re-focusing that the turning of the numbers incites. Who do I really want to be? What is the best I can give of myself in 2015? What is it that I’m uniquely responsible to give and do and be with the whisper of life entrusted to me?

Though things barrel forward on every front, and my lists (oh gosh, my lists) teem with tasks and figurings and unrealized possibilities, I so badly need to pause and reflect and recenter.

In these first days of 2015, I’ve been coaxing reflections from their corners-of-hiding. I’ve used my go-to prompts (What was great? What could be different?), and I’ve borrowed prompts, and better than those, I’ve given my mind space to meander and I’ve let it lead me to things I should be thinking about (minds are great tools when you give them some breathing room). I’ve probed our home-life habits, our business trajectory, and my spiritual realities (soooo different than my intentions can those realities be), and I’ve surveyed the 2015 reading landscape (details coming soon).

I needed the new year to cue all of this, but I need to not keep waiting for a year to arrive before repeating the exercise. One of these years, twelve months will be the majority of what I have left.

So my one major “goal” for the new year is to regularly take time to reflect. To set aside time, often, to revisit the aims and words and work I desire and have been given.

To have a bit of built-in accountability for this, I’ll share bits of them on the blog this year. If it’s July, and I haven’t posted how I’m doing, that means I’m failing. If that happens, please start sending howlers to spur me to action, would you?

As I aim to do that (something I’m obviously failing at), I’m curious how you do it. Do you set goals/aims/intentions/whathaveyou around the turn of the year? If so, how do you revisit them as January becomes April becomes August?

On Finding New Rhythms

We’ve now been in Lebanon a month. A month.

It feels like six. I don’t know how it works, but if you split your time between continents it does the bizarrest things to the felt passage of time.

And while things in week four are far easier than they were in week one,  I still feel like I’m in the throws of transition. Maybe it’s like adjusting to new babies: at a month in you’re only realizing how whack things are and still have no idea how to adjust them, nor the energy to even think about doing so. (So I hear, anyway.)

I’m starting to notice that the hardest part of long-distance moves is developing new rhythms. The old way was just so natural. I knew my on-the-way-home grocery stop would exactly 12 minutes. I knew what roads to avoid at what time of day. I knew where to hide during a break so that I could be alone in my head without being interrupted.

But then the familiar left, and with it, all sense of rhythm and instinct. And I find myself flustered, and bumbling, and frustrated.

I don’t know when I can reliably take a shower, because it requires me to be to be home during at least 2 hours of government electricity (which is off half the day, though I never know which half). I don’t know when to do laundry, because it requires about 3 hours of government electricity, and I have to be home if we (surprise!) go dark in the middle of the load. Braving the grocery store (and the roads that get us there) is still a pretty big event, and difficult to force ourselves to tackle at the end of already-exhausting days. (Did I mention the work week is 6 days long here?)

All of this means I’m eating a lot of junk food, which exacerbates the felt lack of norms and rhythms.

I’ve moved enough to know it won’t last forever. It’s counter-intuitive, but trying harder doesn’t improve things any faster. It only frustrates things and makes me (even more) miserable.

So instead of berating myself for another week of lame dinners, missed blog posts, and destroyed-house-ness, I’m trying to go a little easy on myself and make time for things I enjoy. Today I’m stirring myself another cup of nescafe, enjoying the clouds and rain and cold (the upsides of this transition), and lingering a bit longer over Order of the Phoenix.

This is hard for me to do. I feel like it “shouldn’t be that big of a deal” to get through everyday life. I feel irresponsible for taking a break when there is so much to be done and so little I’ve accomplished. But I also think a little breathing room can go a long way.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one in transition right now. Which means I’m likely not the only one berating myself for not getting the “new” just right yet.

So maybe it’s time for a glass of wine and a soak in the tub, or a small dive into whatever helps each of us feel most feel like ourselves. The stopping helps. Really. It releases tension, for one. But there’s also something about the space in a stop that gives room for things to fall into place, which is a significant step toward new rhythms.

If you’re in need of one, take a stop with me, will you? I’d love to hear how it goes.

Home of Hope (and a New Adventure)

I’ve been hoping to escape the Middle East almost since the day I landed here in late 2009.

There are things I love about the Peninsula, and Oman in particular, but while some people were made to adore sunny 108+ degree cloudless days for over half the year (I’m looking at you, Brits), this rain-lover was not.

And while I love other cultures and languages (and will never be disappointed in the years I’ve spent here), living forever in this particular culture would not be my favorite fit.

So how excited am I that not only are we off on new adventures, but new adventures that might just take us to mountains and valleys and fruit and flowers and rain and seasons and the Mediterranean?

Uhhh… pretty excited.

And better – way better – than that, this move resonates with our deepest desires. We’ve realized our current life is a lot of he-does-this and she-does-that, when really, we want a WE do THIS.

We’ve long wanted the stories we’re living to mingle more intimately. We’ve prayed that when they do, there would be a strong element of tangible good in it. We’ve hoped that it would use the best of how we were made, challenge the best of what we have to give, and put all of it to good use.

Well…

Last spring, in the chancest of chance meetings, we heard of a home for kids in Lebanon that, while doing great good, remains underfunded and understaffed.

While many homes host only orphans, or only children from a particular religious background, Home of Hope takes in kids picked up by the police, and accepts them regardless of background or tribe (space permitting, that is).

Most of these 4-18 year-olds aren’t orphans. They may be refugees that have lost touch with their families, or been removed from severely abusive situations, or in many cases, their parents are (or soon will be) in prison. In the extreme cases? The police intervened as their parents sold them for their organs. Or as slaves.

Yes, you read that right.

And parents or no, the majority of the kids don’t have Lebanese papers (citizenship, a visa, etc.) and can’t get them. They also can’t go anywhere else. (It takes papers to travel.) Effectively, they don’t exist.

They can’t enroll in school, can’t get healthcare, can’t be adopted. When they’re old enough, they won’t be able to legally hold a job, rent an apartment, or get married.

They will, of course. Because life demands it. But they’ll have to do so in the cracks. In the shadows. Unseen.

And this is the real need, I think. Who has ever been for them? Who has noticed that she has a way with spacial manipulation or that he has perfect pitch? Who has ever given them a chance and who ever will? Who has ever seen that one valuable life and leaned in to tell them how important they are?

There’s a funny thing about us discovering this need, at this time. It fits exactly who Brady and I are, where we are in life, and the many things He’s been putting on our minds and in our hearts. We don’t have our own kids. We spent a decade living in community working on a college campus. We’ve been thinking more and more about injustice and our responsibility as the “haves” in the world. And we’ve been yearning to be able to live the same story (instead of separate ones).

So, late one Tuesday night last spring, we decided to leap. Into the wild. Into a new story. It’s pretty freaky, really. But the good adventures always are.

And So It Begins. (Lent, That Is)

Today begins one of the two seasons we (in the west) still bother to pay attention to in the Liturgical (Church) Year. We have Advent right before Christmas (how else would we countdown to Santa?) and Lent for the seven-ish weeks leading up to Easter (because everyone needs to slow their caffeine intake every now and again).

Snark aside, Lent is upon us. And while contemporary practice is more about healthifying than slowing and Passion, it might be something different for us. If we want it to be.

The Liturgical Calendar is one of the ancient rhythms of church, a rhythm which provides space and provocation for remembering what is Real in this up-turned world of ours. Lent and Advent are a part of this rhythm, but traditionally their observance was much more than logging out of Facebook or lighting a wreath.

And sadly, we’ve now associated those things with the names of the liturgical seasons for so long that the words Lent and Advent no longer whisper of their depths. It’s like we’ve filled a red plastic cup with water at the beach and are calling it the Pacific Ocean.

It is. And yet, it isn’t.

What Lent and Advent (and the whole Calendar) really offer is a rhythm of remembering.  They give us the chance to step into stride with the great cloud of witnesses and take a deep inhale of Better Things.

I don’t know about you, but I need that. I want that. [Read more…]

On Picking Up After a Hiatus

Do you find it difficult to return to something after being “gone” for a while? Reading again after a busy season, or returning to housework after a vacation, or starting to exercise again after being sick?

I’m awful at it. 

Which means it’s challenging for me to get back to posting after being “gone” for a while. It’s silly, I guess. But I feel like a failure and think I need to apologize (neither of which make for interesting reading, I’m afraid), and I’m rusty and out-of-the-routine.

But I’m glad to be back, back to Oman and back to the blog, and back to some semblance of routine. Last Thursday we had a roof-top celebration of Thanks overlooking the Oman Gulf and then we feasted again in a nearby town with friends we’ve had for over a decade.

Having long-time friends in the Gulf is certainly something I’m thankful for.

Since you’re being so nice about my absence and all, I give you a humiliating video of me being ridiculous about some baby sea turtles. (You’ll have to pardon B’s iPhone video skills; I forgot to remind him about the whole horizontal-orientation thing.)

Oh, and just in case you need more baby sea turtles in your life, here’s what my purse looks like with a dozen or so wriggling babes.

So that’s me. What have you been on hiatus from that you need to get back to?