I’m traveling a lot for my real job these days. Here are a few souvenirs keeping me company…
*Avec Eric. What a lovely show. You can watch episodes online including one shot in the Caymans. I love the aesthetic of the show – lots of white space, clean logo, simple premise. It’s therapeutic TV.
*On Being {the NPR show previously known as Speaking of Faith} aired Pursuing Happiness: a conversation at my husband’s alma mater, Emory, with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; Rev. Dr. Katharine Bishop Jefferts Schori, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church; and Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. I heard parts of it in the shower one day and had to look it up. My favorite conversation is at the one hour mark, when Rabbi Jonathon Sacks says: “Finding happiness doesn’t always follow from pursuing it. Sometimes, the deepest happiness comes when you are least expecting it.” He tells a story of a man looking at people rushing around in the center of town. The man stops someone and asks him why he is running and the man says, “I’m running to make a living.” The rabbi says to him, “how come you are so sure that the living is in front of you and you have to run to catch it up. Maybe it’s behind you and you’ve got to stop and let it catch up with you.”
“Sometimes we don’t need to pursue happiness, we just need to pause and let it catch up with us.”
*In The Heart Of The World – Mother Teresa. Love these quotes:
“There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things.”
“The fullness of our heart is expressed in our eyes, in our touch, in what we write, in what we say, in the way we talk, the way we receive, the way we serve. That is the fullness of our heart expressing itself in many ways.”
*Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron is a nice follow up to The Artists Way about finding inspiration when the well is dry.
*Everyday Grace by Marianne Williamson is full of positive insights.
“With every thought, we ourselves decide whether to welcome God’s reality and its miraculous prospects.”
*Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund {now a movie} was fluffy and enjoyable plane reading.
*In the read-but-not-too-keen-to-recommend category, I will say to skip Must You Go: Life With Harold Pinter by Antonia Fraser which was disappointingly pretentious and cliche, and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris -darker than usual and not as funny. I still love Sedaris, but this one is not my fave.
