Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. – Plato
I found this quote, the first sentence of which is as good an encapsulation of what I believe as I’ve ever read, on Kerry Landreth’s beautiful blog, Next Trip Around the Sun.
Great New Books – As you may or may not know, I write occasionally for Great New Books, reviewing a book I’ve loved. At the end of the year we always publish a series of group posts, which I really love. We shared our Best Books of 2016, our Favorite Book Quotes from 2016, our Favorite Book We Finally Got Around to Reading in 2016, and our Most Anticipated Books of 2017. There are some great books mentioned here, and I hope you’ll check it out.
The Invisible Workload – Oh, wow. This article from Time made me cry. It’s so true, every word of it. I’ve said before that the primary work of motherhood is the remembering work. It’s the mental space that juggling all the details takes up that I’m most aware of and that, lately, feels heaviest. I don’t mean to complain – I’m grateful and most of the time, I choose the role of Rememberer in Chief – but I appreciate hearing from someone outside that I’m not crazy to feel this as a heavy responsibility.
Be A Creature of Freshness – I love in particular what Lauren has to say about “trimming the fat.” I’ve had several conversations with friends in the last year about not wanting to focus, at this point in our lives, on friendships that don’t fulfill us. I think of Anne Lamott’s story of shopping with her friend Pammy, who was facing terminal cancer, and stressing about how clothes made her look. Pammy said, “Anne, I really don’t think we have that kind of time.” I feel the same way about friendships that aren’t mutual. I also relate to what Lauren says about putting her dislike of the phone on her voicemail. Amen to that.
Women Leaders, Relying on their Peers’ Power and Their Own – I was thrilled to see who women I view as role models and inspirations, Sheryl Sandberg and Gloria Steinem, together in this short interview. My favorite comment is Steinem’s answer to the last question, where she talks about listening as much as talking, and about the ways that both boys and girls are forced into boxes that they’d benefit from escaping.
What are you reading, thinking about, listening to, and loving in this new year?
I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly. You can find them all here.
Sometimes, I choose a word of the year. Sometimes, I don’t. It depends on whether a word presents itself to me in the days and weeks leading up to the end of a year.
My 2016 word was ease, which felt both ironic and essential as the year unfolded not at all easefully. In 2011, I chose trust, and in 2012, I chose light. I’m sure there’s some ineffable rationale behind why certain words present themselves to me at certain times (similar, of course, to my belief that there’s a deep-seated logic behind why certain quotes and lyrics run through my mind at certain times).
For the last several days, I’ve been thinking about one word: deliberate.
Deliberate. That’s my word for 2017.
I wish to be deliberate about my love, my time, and my attention in 2017. The truth is I already feel I’m pretty deliberate my choices. I’ve been thinking about this. Am I choosing something easy as it’s already something I do? Is that a cop-out? Maybe. Ease sure wasn’t something I was good at, for example. Arguably, neither are trust or lightness. I do think there’s room for all of us to be more deliberate, though. There are two other words that have been hovering in my mind, so much that I almost chose a triad of words for 2017. Those other two words are gentle and human.
Maybe I want to be a deliberately gentle human in 2017? A gentle, human, deliberate person? All true. I feel less laser-focused on deliberate than I’ve been on other words, but it does keep insistently presenting itself. I was speaking to a dear friend on the last day of 2016 and I mentioned deliberate as a possible word of the year. This was the first time I’ve said this out loud. “It seems so humorless,” I went on, saying that it felt like in some ways like a dull or uninspired choice. Her reaction to the word was different, and that difference was validating to me. Something for me to think about, as I move forward in this new year, is why my impression of deliberate – a word I own as something I am – is boring and lame. What does that say? I’m not sure but I don’t think it’s good.
I will log off the computer now, as a deliberate act of choosing my family.
Do you have a word for this year? If so, what is it? Do you think deliberate is a humorless word? What does it mean that I chose it?