Hemingway
This November I’m popping in to say hello and offer a little bit of everything: links, recommendations, and thoughts. My loved ones and I returned this week from a trip to the Florida Keys. I wanted to go to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home. I’ve enjoyed Hemingway’s writing since I was a kid and this spot is magical if awfully overcrowded (shout out to Kara for the pictures when I was too overwhelmed to take any). In anticipation of the trip, I watched Ken Burn’s fantastic Hemingway documentary. I had to donate to PBS to gain access, which was 100% worth it. I will be on a Burns kick in 2026 I am sure.
Part of why I enjoyed Burns’ Hemingway is my spiritual (and therapy-driven) evolution is calling me to understand, as Franciscan Father Richard Rohr says, that “everything belongs.” I get the urge to banish complicated people but as I grow older I am more moved and creatively inspired by the liberal impulse to include it all. At church we say whole doesn’t mean perfect or unbroken it means entire and I’m trying to train my brain to think this way more.
While Hemingway the man was complicated, I love his writing due to its spareness. I feel the soul is laid bare, not his soul but the soul of the English language. His simplicity of style and subject choice often elevates the luminous everyday, something I also find in Beverly Cleary’s writing style. (I googled to see if anyone else in the world found Hemingway and Cleary to be similar and lo and behold, the best of the internet, this guy did!) If you feel called, visit or revisit A Moveable Feast and/or all of the Ramona Quimby books. They remind me that when we are successful at communicating in a clear and uncluttered way, what’s important can really shine.
Nun Kick
I’ve also been on a nun kick lately, which began from a series of religious dreams I had in October. In one dream, I felt a deep sense of reassurance that the Catholic church “had my DNA.” I worked the dream with my spiritual director. Working a dream involves the dreamer explaining her dream. The listener then asks questions and projects his own meaning onto the dream to see if it clicks for the dreamer. If it does, it can be illuminating.
My director projected that if it were his dream, he was part of a religious order in a past life. Click. Since then, as it goes, I’ve noticed so many related things popping up around me. Want to join me on my nun kick? I’m in the middle of reading these two books: Convent Wisdom: How Sixteenth-Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First-Century Life, and The Cloister Walk. If whole books on this topic are not your speed, check out this heart-warming article about “Nuns and Nones” cohabitating together, complete with this haiku by Sister Janet Rozzano regarding her new millennial roommates:
Eek. What will I say?
I’m too old for millennials.
Surprise, we’re soul mates!
Also check out the Benet Hill Monastery, close-ish to me in Colorado Springs. I think we’ll have to make a field trip down to see these Sisters. If you are particularly inspired by them, they have an array of offerings for you on your spiritual journey. May I be as welcoming and inclusive in my practice as they are. And – if none of this is terribly interesting to you, maybe just stick these women in a corner of your mind, ready to gently counter you when you’re sure everyone sucks and the world has gone to hell. There are so many good people doing such good work everywhere and it blesses our lives to be open to that truth.
Faith
Finally, I’ve been thinking a lot about faith this month. I was inspired by someone asking me what they thought was a stupid question. As it often happens, doorways are opened when people are brave enough to ask foundational (not stupid) questions, like “What does the word faith mean, particularly now? I don’t see a lot that makes me feel faithful.”
When I heard this question, I first thought of these words: “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark” (from Bengali Renaissance polymath Rabindranath Tagoreare). Tagoreare’s words express the multisensory nature of faith that goes beyond seeing with our eyes, believing, or deciding something with one’s mind. It lands somewhere deeper. I then remembered that I’d previously defined faith as “seeing with my soul.” Faith calls me to lean into a different dimension, and it is more than a feeling, it is a state that we can practice.
Faith is important because it asks us to be open: to be comfortable not knowing. What happens when we practice not knowing? This is not being willfully ignorant or even contrarian about cause and effect or science. It looks more like acknowledging that we hardly even scratch the surface of what we know about cause and effect. It looks like understanding mathematicians and scientists as endlessly curious people who work miracles by acknowledging all they don’t know, can’t literally see. Faith asks us to be open to things we cannot prove or quantify. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the conviction of things not seen. Faith asks us to be open to the wisdom of God, to the wisdom of Love.
So frequently faith is used as a shield to keep everything, including God, out. It’s really the opposite: a crack in the shield. Philosopher Cornel West said, “There has to be some serious doubt, otherwise faith becomes merely a dogmatic formula, an orthodoxy, a way of evading the complexity of life, rather than a way of engaging honestly with life.” This is why it was not a stupid question!
With that, I’m off to decorate the two most gorgeous Christmas trees; somehow we got the most beautiful ones we’ve ever had, again. I send you love as we embark on this holy and hectic season. I’m wondering: 1) What author’s home might you like to visit? 2) Is there a part of the nun journey that surprises or interests you? 3) What does faith mean to you right now? Holla at your girl.
