Category: Intentionality

Intentionality

Early Rising

Carrie Sue Barnes

We’ve now come upon the time of year when the morning sunlight is already filling my bedroom by a little after 5 a.m. My friends think I’m crazy for only keeping a white curtain over my window, nothing to keep the room dark while I sleep in the morning hours. But that’s just me. This time of year, I start getting up 30 or 45 minutes earlier than necessary a few times a week just because the sunlight is all it takes to get me out of bed. I wake with a small smile on my face as I realize I don’t have to hear my alarm clock sound because I’ve woken before the time for which it’s set. When I do sleep until that time, I have fewer grumbling words for the chipper radio DJ rousing me to consciousness. Not every day, of course, but plenty of days.

This particular morning was one of those days. Daylight (not sunlight for the clouds had come in during the night) illuminated that white curtain and I was awake and eager to be upright. My legs held a bit of stiffness from the tennis games played the night before but I stretched them out and dressed for a walk. I scrolled through my iPod and let Switchfoot’s “Beautiful Letdown” take me out the door. The rain, only a sprinkle at first, began almost as soon as my feet hit the sidewalk but the temperature held some lovely warmth and the rain did too. 30 minutes of me and God and the music. 30 minutes of footfalls on empty roads. I stopped for five of those minutes at a neighborhood park as the swingset proved to be irresistible. That first hour or so of daylight holds an aspect of peace belonging exclusively to it. There is a sort of authority in the sun’s light compelling me to awaken and acknowledge it. And I don’t mind at all.
Intentionality

An Unchecked List

Carrie Sue Barnes

A storm’s coming.

No, that wasn’t a metaphysical statement spoken in a hushed tone. A real storm is coming. According to the online radar, it should hit right around the time I will walk out of this building to my car and drive home. Convenient. I do love a good storm though, especially one with plenty of volume.

I didn’t sign in here to talk about the weather so let’s move on. I signed in to talk about a list. The list. The “do before I get old and/or die” list. Some might call it a bucket list although my aversion to anything Jack Nicholson related keeps me from adopting the term. I’ve kept such a list for ten or more years. It’s been revised a handful of times and each version is kept for posterity. Occasionally there’s an item that doesn’t make the new list as the desire to fulfill it has passed and it no longer holds significance for me. A few nights ago I retrieved all the versions from my desk drawer and read through them.

Hold a master’s degree in English or writing
Live near the ocean
Kayak in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior
Publish a novel
Learn to play piano
Visit England, Ireland, Italy, France, Hawaii
Hike at Porcupine Mountains and Grand Teton & Yellowstone National Parks
Get married
Ride in a hot air balloon
Write a non-fiction faith-themed book
Write a biography

These are some, not all, of the ones still to be fulfilled.

So few lines have a checkmark beside them…
Sail on the ocean
See U2 in concert
Live by myself
Hike at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Teach RCIA at a parish
Travel to Niagra Falls
Crochet a blanket
Write a novel

I decided not to revise the list this time around. The desires that have been left unpursued, not just unfulfilled, sadden me the most. I know that not every wish and endeavor will come to fruition. Certainly I’m learning to live with a bit of failure from day to day and that helps me keep my hope firmly anchored where it belongs. Not to have tried though, not to have pursued… I can’t live with that from day to day. I won’t.

Intentionality

After Midnight

Carrie Sue Barnes

What am I doing here at 12:04 a.m., listening to She & Him and sliding open the patio door before I sit down at the kitchen counter? Blogging for the first time since Easter, for one thing. I’ve begun and deleted a few posts in the last week and a half. Each time I begin to gather my thoughts they scatter before I can finish a paragraph, so I’m not promising any coherence in this attempt either.

My sister, with whom I live, is in China for two weeks. This leaves me with a home to myself and plenty of quiet in which to think. I haven’t decided if that has proven to be a positive or a negative. It’s a bit of both, quite likely. On several occasions lately my mind has been consumed by the idea of living honestly. Easter night and last night were the greatest contributors to this theme, each due to very particular and separate struggles. Let me see if I can explain. It is not the simple opposite of telling lies. Rather, it is the appeal to be honest – stripped, to lack a cover or veil – in answers, in reactions, in interplay. I have this heavy sense of wasting time with pretending. As I catch myself at the start of a pretense, whether with another or with myself, I cannot follow through on it.

It’s a terribly unsafe way to live. Vulnerability, risk, misunderstanding – these are its results. But maybe more will come besides… maybe courage, maybe integrity, maybe fewer regrets and more glad-I-took-them chances. Truth faced, even in its bitter or thorny forms, is to be preferred to pretense, isn’t it? If nothing else I think I might stand surer in who I am and who I am not, in what I need to give and what I need to receive. Heroines parade through my mind and I see what I’m aiming for in this. Cassandra Mortmain, Emily Byrd Starr, Lily Bart as an antithesis… Lucy Honeychurch most of all.

“…let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.”
(E M Forster, A Room With a View)

Books, Intentionality

One Good Thing About This World

Carrie Sue Barnes

The rain is landing percussively on the office building’s roof and dancing on the adjacent blacktop. It is a rhythmic sound of spring and it is making me smile as I putter through the usual Thursday tasks on my desk. It is spring! For it does not rain in winter, not where I live. The trees have that stripped naked look which only spring can cause. I am daydreaming of tennis matches at the park and bike rides on the county trail. Those activities are still a ways off but I find it easy to believe they will be here in a blink of an eye while I listen to this snowbank melting rain.

I’m starting over on a few things today. The daily workout routine I committed myself to but let slide during the last several days (with good reason; I had a newborn nephew to visit and hold instead of make time for exercise); the fasting from TV for Lent which I cheated on yesterday because I just could not forgo the season finale of Psych; chapter 13 of The Mercy Hour and the critical plot juncture therein; praying Morning Prayer each day before work (why do I convince myself I’ll get through the day okay without starting it in prayer? So lame.); deterimned patience with a few particulars of life that I cannot do much about at present (impatience has been reigning supreme lately)… What would life be without these “starting over” days?

“That is one good thing about this world… there are always sure to be more springs,” remarked Anne Shirley and I must agree. We live prodigal lives. Spending thriftlessly our time and energy, indulging in what will not satisfy, and having to return again and again to what will. We must cycle round to spring before we reach the end of five, ten or all of our years and realize we lingered in winter because it was easier to stay there. Newness and freshness can be encircling us and we stay tucked under our coverings of old habits and weaknesses.

The other night I stretched out on my bed for a good think after reading another chapter of one of my favorite books, I Capture the Castle. I thought about the layers of effects that book has had on me. While reading a favorite chapter I’d realized I wasn’t quite feeling what I’d felt in the past about the story. Not a lesser reaction or affection, but different. Instantly this realization produced sadness and a wish for all that I’d ever thought and felt about the book to remain the same. It took some effort to accept that this was neither possible nor preferable. For an effect to be efficacious, for a change to make change, there must be a result. There must be new aspects to my thoughts and feelings if, as I claim, this book really did have ramifications on my thoughts and feelings. The book, of course, is only one example. An adventure, a job, a friendship, a prayer, any undertaking… they change us (or should) and yet it is so easy to mourn the “old me” that changed instead of rejoicing in what is made new.
Intentionality, Writing

Winter Skin

Carrie Sue Barnes

It’s December 7th and a fluffy layer of fresh snow is on the ground. With more to come today and tomorrow, in fact a surprising 9 or 10 inches by Wednesday morning, I’m realizing that winter is in full swing. It’s here, with its winds and snows and frosts, and there’s no turning back. The song in the video above is one of my current favorite seasonal tunes by my favorite band (6 days until I see their Christmas show!!! Sorry, sidetracked…) and it is especially well suited to my mood today. Maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s the fact that it’s Advent, maybe it’s the seven days in a row that I’ve been sick; I have a few reasons to slow down… and to quiet down. In fact, that’s going to be my mantra this winter. “Slow down. Quiet down. Slow down. Quiet down.” I’m going to walk through my days, rather than run, skid, slide or barrel headlong into the next day and the next.

On Saturday I needed to write an article for the next edition of our church’s newsletter. My bout with the seasonal flu didn’t make that easy as I couldn’t seem to clear my mind enough to remember what I was talking about from the start to the end of a paragraph. So I cheated. I pulled out an old prayer journal and flipped through the pages to find a suitable reflection I’d written that could be adapted into article form. In the course of perusing the old journal, I found more than just an appropriate piece of material for my article. I found other tidbits that reminded me of the things I wanted to write; ideas and meditations that I now readily saw as seeds for longer works. And just like that the writing bug was back. I’ve repressed it by focusing on the other tasks at hand, i.e. directing/teaching RCIA, Theology of the Body study, adult faith nights, and life in general. The sacrifice has been a necessary one. I haven’t touched my in-progress novel for a couple of months, at least. I haven’t sent my completed novel to any new publishers in several months. To be honest, the ongoing busyness has kept me from dwelling too much on the lack of writing. It’s allowed me to ‘be okay’ with the break from it.

Then I got sick. I slowed down. I couldn’t multi-task. I needed quiet. And you know what, as much I loathed being sick, there was an aspect of it that was distinctly enjoyable. Knowing I wasn’t good for much else, I pulled out Full of Days and picked up where I’d left off in revising the chapter divisions. Sure, I knew that once I was well enough, I’d need to get back to writing RCIA class materials and cleaning the house but for a few hours on Saturday, I got to be a fiction writer again. The tradeoff: I am completely renewed in my motivation to complete the class materials so I can move on (or back) to writing fiction again.

All I had to do was slow down, quiet down, and things seemed doable again. So for the next few months, I’m putting on my winter skin and walking. Slowly, quietly. Sometimes that’s all we should ask of ourselves.

Intentionality

Day One

Carrie Sue Barnes

This is day one.

I absolutely love mornings. I don’t always immediately love them. Those first moments as I become aware of the radio waking me from dreams and the chill of the air outside the blankets reaches my conciousness are not always my favorite times. But I get past those initial upleasentries and I greet the morning gladly. And on occasion, I love the morning from the start. By some miracle I realize that this day is new; I know from the moment I wake that the day has the potential to be a really good day. Aren’t mornings wonderful for that? New chances. New light. New.

For some reason, this is one of those ‘love it from the start’ mornings. Don’t ask me why. It’s cold. It’s raining. I have an overwhelming to-do list and not nearly enough hours in the day to accomplish it all. Yesterday could have been better. Tomorrow won’t be much different. But today… I don’t know. There is nothing stopping me from making today Day One of beginning to live how I’ve intended to start living for far too long. I mean, really, why shouldn’t today be that day? Why shouldn’t today be the day I start the daily prayer time I’ve gotten out of the habit of having, and reading for more time than I watch television, and skipping any regrettable unhealthy meals or snacks, and getting back to the gym at least 4 days a week, and letting go of the attachment that I’ve needed to let go of for so very long.

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” (Socrates)

Faith, Holiness, Intentionality

Birthday Blog

Carrie Sue Barnes

My 28th birthday; I intended to think of all I hope this year could bring, what I hope for in the next two years before 30. Instead I have the themes of Deacon Dave’s sermon from 2 days ago still on my mind. What am I willing to give, give up, surrender, sacrifice for the sake of moving forward toward Heaven… for the sake of holiness? Material possessions, comforts, relationships that direct me away from Christ, entertainments, dreams or plans? Is there even a harder question I could be asked right now?

Then this morning I read one of my favorite passages, 1 John 4, and it leaves me convicted of the imperfection of my love for God especially, and everyone else too. Not in a negative way, or a burdensome way… rather, it’s this dawning awareness of what I would do well to hope for in the next year or two years: holiness – total abandoment to the love of God. The fruits, the ever satisfying fruits of living in and according to that love are what I truly long for, even underneath the shapes all my particular longings take.