Checking on sentence. sss
I’m not sure where August went, but now we’re halfway through September. To pause for a brief second, I tried to remember a few things I’ve learned in the past 30 days.
On a recommendation from my daughter Alex, I borrowed and read the book “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon. In the brief chapter “Choose What to Leave Out,” he notes the right constraints can lead to your very best work.
“Dr. Seuss wrote ‘The Cat in the Hat’ with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Suess came back and won the bet with ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.”
In a Bible study by local author and worship leader Laura Dingman, “Found — quitting the game of hide and seek,” we were studying 1 Corinthians 12 about how God designed our bodies as a model for understanding our lives together as a church.
The sentences that jumped out on page 125 were: “Sometimes I wrestle with believing I have a purpose. When others seem to have a grander invitation than I do, I think I am missing something and I feel excluded. Just because I belong at God’s table doesn’t mean an invitation to every table is extended. Sometimes parts of the body take a rest.” (I love those last two sentences.)
In 2017, the American Hosta Society Convention will be hosted in our own home state, so in an ode to our Hoosier hosta hybridizers — (yes, Indiana is home to many!) — I just finished planting a new garden in front of our beehives.
Can’t name them all, but a few Indiana hybridized hostas in this garden include: hosta Brother Stefan and Hoosier Dome by Olga Petryszyn, hosta Krugerrand and Sutter’s Mill by the late Bob Balitewicz, also known as Indiana Bob, hosta Battle Star and Prime Meridian by Randy Goodwin, hosta Empress Wu by Brian and Virginia Skaggs, and hosta Bodacious Blue by Randy Goodwin, Bob Whitmore and R. Hiland.
I have also been binge-reading “StrengthsFinder” by Tom Rath and “The Mindful Writer” by Dinty W. Moore — but for some reason keep procrastinating the start and finish to Marie Kondo’s “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.”
What have you learned this month?
