thinking thursday

Every Thursday, links to things I have found around the web that have made me think.

MIND

I am reading more this year than ever before. Hosting two book groups is one reason for it, but the other is a renewed sense that writers must read voraciously to improve their craft. Plus, I love books, plain and simple. Here are some reading lists to get you started, should the alarmingly tall pile of books on your bedside table need enhancing:

Summer reading: “a short reading list for anyone interested in shaking up the status quo.”

1oo Books by Black Women Everyone Must Read

BODY

Dang. I need to make these immediately.

And oh, yes, to this slaw.

Because sometimes you need to re-lace your shoes.

SOUL

Patients need poetry. And so do doctors.

Forgive me, body before me, for this.
Forgive me for my bumbling hands, unschooled
in how to touch: I meant to understand
what fever was, not love. Forgive me for
my stare, but when I look at you, I see
myself laid bare.
(excerpt from Rafael Campo’s poem, “Morbidity and Mortality Rounds”)

Dealing with emotional pain. Sensory focus, expressive writing, and meditation: “three approaches to dealing with emotions that are free, and can turn what is now experienced as pain into a valued source of creativity. Rather than something that has been perceived as  negative , it is possible to come to understand that these challenging experiences are our only opener of our eyes to the highest levels of truth.”

Traces of a Man Who Disappeared: “My host stared out the kitchen window. ‘It’s easy to hate people you don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I did know her. I did. And she was wonderful. Most of her employees came to accept her. Surprisingly even some of the church people. She was that loved.’ He reached into a kitchen cabinet for a box. ‘I didn’t understand much of it back then,’ he said. ‘His life, I mean. But I so respected her. In the end you have to become the person who makes you happy.’

WORD

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ” -Henry David Thoreau

(photo from here: Porcelain fighting figures dropped and photographed at the moment of shattering)