July 23, 2023
Hi friends,
- MY MEMOIR IS OUT and I’m excited to have you read it and comment. I guarantee that reading my Leaving The Land of Numb will make you consider your own story and ponder these important questions: “What does it mean for me to be more fully known?” “What part of my story would I really like to tell others?” ” Would I ever feel safe enough to tell important parts of my story to someone?” “How will telling it make me and those I love more fully human, more fully the people God made me to be?”
Those are not easy questions, but I think they are so important, especially if you want to be more fully known. Read the book and take the risk of being more fully known.
- As the summer rolls along, here are two books and two poems that have given me some fun, some hope and a lot to ponder.
The books…
- I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s’ The Hobbit back in the day. This summer I thoroughly enjoyed once again following Bilbo Baggins as he joined the wizard Gandalf and 13 dwarves on a quest to claim the dwarves’ home and seize the treasure (the magnificent Arkenstone) from the dragon Smaug. What a great quest as Bilbo travels from his peaceful rural surroundings into sinister, dangerous territory. Bilbo gains more and more courage as his perilous quest marches toward its conclusion.
- Amor Towels’ 2021 novel–The Lincoln Highway (with more almost 78,000 four and five star reviews on Amazon—took me from Kansas (my home state), to Nebraska, to New York and beyond. Set in 1954, Towels’ story is a fast-paced 10-day romp of 3 young men from very different backgrounds. They all just happened to serve time together in a Salina, Kansas, juvenile detention center. Their journey kept me guessing. Emmett Watson, the main character, wants to take his little brother Billy to California to try and find their mother. But somehow all 3 of the young men, and Billy, Emmett’s brother, end up in New York. I got caught up in the saga that certainly did not end the way I thought it would!
The Poems…
- I’ve been pondering these two poems for 25 years. This summer they both repeatedly have popped in my mind.
The Mary Oliver poem challenges me to make the most of every day. And the Dietrich Bonhoeffer poem challenges me to ponder the man I want to become.
I love the final line of both poems...
Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, from The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2008.
—–
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1905-1945)
Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me I stepped from my cells confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, Like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me I used to speak to my warders freely and friendly and clearly, as through it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me I bore the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I myself know of myself? Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other? Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling? Or is something within me like a beaten army Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely question of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Letters and Papers From Prison, Fortress Press, 2015
Enjoy the rest of the summer. Grab my memoir and let me know what you think…
Blessings,
Don
donfollis.com 