Five Minute Friday: FAMILIAR

Today I'm linking up at Five Minute Friday, writing for five minutes on a given prompt.

This week's word: FAMILIAR.

Before starting to write, I did a quick Google search on the etymology of the word familiar. As we might expect, it comes from the same root as the word family. Familiar can also  refer to a spirit that someone might summon if they want to contact the dead.

But I like the Old English sense of the word: "on a family footing."

It makes me think of our family's farm in PEI. The property is sold now, so I won't be going back to that particular house anymore. But during the many summertime visits Richard and I and the kids made to visit Mom and Dad, it was always the familiar things that truly made it "home."

Almost immediately after arriving, we'd go to the pantry to run a glass of cold water from the tap. Our own city water could never compare to the well water on the farm.

The first thing Jonathan would do was go out to the porch to find the buckets of old Legos, drag them down to the parlour in front of the TV, dump them on the floor, and spend the next few hours filling and dumping.

(Even the words I've used -- pantry, porch, parlour -- seem like "home" words. Others would probably call those rooms the kitchen, the mudroom, and the living room or family room. You can call them that if you want, but those weren't our familiar terms.)

Allison would go to the cabinet in the kitchen and look for some old copies of Reader's Digest, or upstairs to the bookshelf in the hallway to find the Little House books or the old school readers. 

Finding the familiar things in their old familiar places was comforting. 

Before the farm was sold we took a few small pieces back home with us: a plate with a house and tree painted on it in blue; a cow figurine with little blocks that you can remove to change the date; a water jug; and a few other things. 

Using these familiar items and recalling exactly where they were in the farmhouse gives a sense of continuity between past and present, there and here, one home and another. I suppose it really does put me on a family footing.

photo Jeannie Prinsen Nov. 2017

Five Minute Friday: EXCUSE

Is it Friday again already? Yes, which means it's time to join the Five Minute Friday linkup, where we write for five minutes on a given prompt. This week's word is EXCUSE.

I went to a salon this morning. The young staff member, whom I'd never met before, asked me what I did, so I told her I taught an online course in essay-writing at the university.

"Oh, I guess that's the way of the future," she said.

I told her that for many years the course had been offered by correspondence: I would walk to campus to pick up my papers, mark them by hand, and walk back to return them. But now, I said, everything is uploaded to the course website, so no student can use the excuse that they couldn't submit their essay because their dog ate it.

"No, a dog certainly can't eat a cyber paper," she laughed.

I had some fun looking up this cliche -- "The dog ate my essay" -- on Wikipedia. An early variation of this trope occurred in the early 1900's when a minister was filling in at a church in Wales. After the service, he tenatively asked the church clerk if the sermon had been all right -- and then he apologized that it might have been a little short because his dog had eaten part of the paper it was written on. 

Apparently the clerk responded by asking whether that dog might have any puppies -- the implication being that their regular vicar might also benefit from having his sermons cut short (or rather, chewed short) by a dog!

It's always tempting to look around for an excuse when something has gone wrong. I suppose humans have been doing that ever since the dawn of time, when Adam blamed his disobedience on Eve and she blamed hers on the serpent.

Sometimes we make excuses to try to avoid facing the consequences that we know, deep down, we deserve.

Or we make excuses because it's just too painful to admit that we've failed.

One of my favourite quotes is from author Henry Cloud: "The truth is always your friend." It's such a simple (almost simplistic) statement, but I think it has a lot of hidden depth and maybe that's why I find myself pondering it so often.

If the truth is really my friend, then I should stop making excuses for myself ... for other people ... even for God ... and embrace the truth and what it has to teach me.

November 2017 What I've been reading (Quick Lit)

Today I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy and sharing a few short reviews of what I've been reading.

I actually haven't done too much reading (of books, that is) these past few months: I've been having some trouble with my glasses, or more precisely my eyesight, which has made reading more of a chore than a pleasure at times. But what I've lacked in quantity, I've made up for in quality.

Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything by Anne Bogel (nonfiction).

This book is by Modern Mrs. Darcy herself, Anne Bogel. In it, Bogel explores several of the most popular and influential personality-typing models, including the Five Love Languages, Highly Sensitive People, StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, and others.

Bogel writes in a warm, encouraging style. She explains each model in an unintimidating way, providing many personal examples that clarify and demystify the material. I was familiar with several of these systems already, but the "cognitive functions" of Myers-Briggs were new to me and at first glance seem very confusing. But Bogel explains them clearly and carefully, repeatedly stepping back to assure the reader, "Don't worry, you'll get this!"

My single caveat: the "girly" cover. It's beautiful -- but this book would be interesting and helpful to male readers as well as female, and the cover doesn't reflect that fact. 

Otherwise, though, I just loved this highly informative and extremely well-written book and will likely be going back to reread some or all of it in future. If you're even a little bit interested in personality typing of any sort, you'll enjoy it.

(Note: I received an advance copy of this book from the author, but that has not influenced my review, nor was I asked to write one.)

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  Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (fiction).

This novel tells the story of Jojo, a teenage boy growing up in Mississippi. He looks up to his black grandfather, Pop, who tells Jojo stories about the time he spent in Parchman, a notorious state pentitentiary; and his dying grandmother, Mam. Jojo has a more complicated relationship with his mother, Leonie, a drug addict who is grieving her brother's death and struggling to be a good mother to Jojo and his baby sister; and with his white father, Michael, who is currently in jail in Parchman. 

When Michael is released, Leonie takes her children on a road trip to pick him up. On the return journey they are accompanied by the ghost (whom only Jojo can see) of a boy Pop had befriended in prison many years earlier, who needs to hear the details about Pop's involvement in his death so that his soul can rest in peace.

Ward intertwines issues of race, spirituality, and family in a way that is both riveting and haunting. Her characters are flawed yet beautiful and admirable in their attempts to rise above circumstances they never asked for. I have never read anything quite like this book. Highly recommended.

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Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brene Brown (nonfiction). 

I love Brene Brown's work and have read most of her previous books, including The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, and Rising Strong. She returns to many of the same themes in her books -- shame, vulnerability, empathy, and courage -- continually layering on new insights. 

In Braving the Wilderness, she addresses the current crisis of belonging in our society: how we tend to split up into camps (left-right, Republican-Democrat, NRA-gun control) out of a desire to fit in -- but often our sense of true belonging withers in the process. With examples from her own life and her research, she discusses how to speak both truthfully and civilly, how to have a strong back but a soft front, how to draw closer to strangers in times of joy and pain, and more. Brown asserts that when we are true to our deepest selves yet also recognize our deep connection to the rest of humanity, we can achieve true belonging, so that -- paradoxically --  we belong nowhere yet everywhere at the same time.

If you're tired of feeling you need to take sides all the time and don't know where you fit anymore, you'll probably appreciate the insights Brown offers. 

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 I'd love to hear what you've been reading. Have you read any of Brene Brown's books? Are you into personality types? What's the latest good novel you read?

Five Minute Friday: SILENCE

Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt. This week's word is SILENCE.

I love silence. I like to sit at my desk or in "my spot" on the living room couch and read, write, or just think, with no sound to interrupt my thoughts.

At times like that, silence feels like a cocoon of warmth, comfort, and peace.

But silence can also be harsh. 

As a kid I felt the icy cold shoulder of silence when a much-older relative refused to speak to me for days because of a passing comment I'd made.

As an adult I felt the sting of the silent treatment when a person who meant a great deal to me walked past me without a word and chose their seat in the room in order to avoid being face to face with me.

In his book A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer distinguishes between being silent "with" others and silent "at" others; the latter can occur "when we give someone 'the silent treatment' to convey our disdain." He asserts, "Silence of this sort destroys community and may even make us conspirators with evil."

We know words have the power to hurt or heal; so does silence. 

It's true that sometimes we must decide (temporarily or permanently) not to communicate with someone if contact would be harmful or unhealthy for us, for them, or for someone else we care about or are responsible for. 

But silence should never be a weapon. It should be a space where growth and healing can occur -- not a tool of anger and destruction.