Entering the “roaming stillness”

The book stacks were winning. Not the ones in the library—the ones by my bed: neat-but-towering stacks waiting to find room on shelves filled with the kindred books I love returning to.

By the end of 2018, I had three stacks. Something had to be done: more reading! So For 2019, I’ve committed to reading more books—the tangible ones with spines and flyleaves and the scent of possibility in their binding. More reading: even when life and to-do lists brim.

A dozen books into this year, and I’m back to my bookworm self. Happy reunion! I thought I’d share some favorite lines from my favorite five reads so far. Happy reading!

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, Terry Tempest Williams: “Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from us…is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges.”

The Long Home, Christian Wiman, from his poem “Elsewhere”:

            He longs

to find some calm within

what he’s become, inside

the sound, a roaming

stillness.

Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health, Dr. Caroline Leaf: “[W]hen our brain enters the rest circuit, we don’t actually rest; we move into a highly intelligent, self-reflective, directed state. And the more often we go there, the more we get in touch with the deep, spiritual part of who we are.”

H is for Hawk, Helen McDonald: “When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe any more. Being an expert opens you up to judgment.” 

We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress, Craig Morgan Teicher: “Wisdom is born where observation and imagination meet, where the real and ideal touch….”