Our adventures this week took us through a number of reading and physical exercises to keep us spiritually, physically, and mentally engaged. We actually do these things every week, but often fail to see and fully appreciate the experience. As we went about our activities each day, we noticed little things coming to light, tiny tidbits of information or sights that redirected our thoughts or efforts. Like footnotes at the bottom of the page in a book, these little pieces of information added to the experience. We thought we’d share some of the concepts we explored about footnotes in this week’s post.
“Literature is the original Internet—every footnote, every citation, every allusion is essentially a hyperlink to another text, to another mind.” –Maria Popova
Theme of the Week: What the Tiny Print Reads
Our theme of the week started while reading a Bible passage on Sunday morning. Admittedly, we were in a hurry, but something in the tiny print made us stop a minute and read more than we normally would have read. The tiny print further explained the passage and the importance of the information in it. The augmented insight provided another perspective of thought that we would have otherwise missed. How much are we missing by not reading these things every day?
We realize our experience was not abnormal, but rather the popular response to having to do anything extra in today’s world. Not that we are averse to doing extra in our household. We actually still do things the long way more often than not and hold on to our traditions of ironing clothes, hand washing vehicles and dishes, and moving all the furniture in the house once a week to do a good cleaning. These practices take time, but they also allow us moments to sort out our thoughts and reassess or analyze whatever issues are at hand while still being productive. These practices also keep us closer to the finer details, or footnotes, of life. (Yes, we know we are not normal in our household).
The art and science behind details and footnotes often gets lost in today’s fast-paced, instant-gratification world. Add in scrolling on computer screen, texting on phones, and using different forms of social media into the mix and you have a huge potential not only to miss the details, but also to misunderstand the content and context, lose focus of the intention, and devalue the message. All of these things seem a large price to pay simply because we won’t take the time to read the little print or fully engage in the communication.
“The ego is formed by contraction; the soul is formed by expansion.” –Richard Rohr
Lesson of the Week: Let the Words Speak
Our lesson of the week came as I was running one day. I was admittedly trying to do too many things at once (run, clear my head, figure out a solution to a problem, and pray). Though I was thankful to be outside running and enjoying nature, I really wanted to feel free—free of issues, conflict, doubt, life drama, and nagging thoughts that had no basis of truth. Frustrated, I looked around for something to break the endless playlist of thoughts from spinning. Why can’t I just be?
Then I heard it, a tiny whisper of a voice inside and around me. Oh, dear. I was in trouble now, or so I thought. Then the words came from deep inside, the only plea I could make:
Father, Oh Father, in heaven above,
I’m caught and I’m not sure how to get up,
There’s this knot in my mind
That’s got me preoccupied,
But I really just want to see
The sun coming up among the trees,
To feel the wind and hear the dove,
To heal the heart within Your Little One.
Taking a deep breath, I heard a response that I could not have anticipated.
Oh, Little One,
See the ripples of the sun
That dance and glaze,
Prance and parade,
Across the leaves
The knots of the trees,
The aster and the bee
And the laughter of the dandelion’s seed?
All have come to rise
To be called at the given time
And so will you
As you grow in pursuit
Of who you are to become
In My heart, My Little One.
This dialog between my inner child and God continued through the next six miles. At one point, I felt tired, but just kept running because for the first time in a while, it appeared I was making progress clearing my head and finding possible solutions for my problems. In reality, I was taking notes of things I saw along the run and allowing the inner soul to speak its peace. The key was letting go long enough to take note in other things along the way and see that these other things were leading me down a better path.
“There will always be reasons to not do something. Be a problem solver, not a problem adder.” –James Clear
Science Lesson of the Week: Footnotes of a Different Variety
Our science lesson of the week came through a different kind of footnote, more specifically, foot notes observed while walking the dogs and running. We noticed different colored asters still in bloom in the fields and along the roads. A more careful look allowed us to notice the different colored asters had different leaf formations. Taking these notes back home and referencing our handy copy of North American Wildlife that is now so worn and page tagged it looks like it has been through a war, we discovered the different colored asters were also different kinds of asters.
The white asters with small but abundant flowers and very thin leaves are white heath asters. This variety can bloom from July into December. The blue aster with heart shaped leaves are blue wood asters. They bloom from August through October. The purple asters with lance shaped leaves and hairy stems are New England asters. This variety blooms from July into October. We also found a small handful of blue asters with thin leaves, known as stiff asters. They also bloom from July through October.
The word aster is from the Greek word for star. These flowers were once known as starworts in England. The very tough stems of the white heath asters can break mowing blades, so the wild flower is also considered a weed with the nickname of steel weed. (This history is similar to that of the tall dark purple iron weed that blooms in July and August).
Just like reading a footnote at the bottom of a page, taking time to acknowledge our foot notes from our activities allowed us to learn more than we anticipated. While we may or may not need to know this information, there is still value to the effort taken to read, understand, and relate the words on the page to the sights in nature. This led us to contemplate if maybe nature is really God’s book of life set before us to read through observations and each of nature’s components are the footnotes to lessons in life.
“The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.”-Dorothy Thompson
Words of the Week: Notes to Keep
Our words of the week from the Daily Word devotional include world peace, inclusion, divine order, illuminate, optimism, pray for others, and clarity. In our quest for world peace, we come across struggles with inclusion. However, if we keep in mind that divine order prevails despite known logic, we can find the light to illuminate a path forward, leading to optimism and the strength to pray for others despite differences between them and us. This process takes time, but allows for clarity, which is what is needed to put aside differences and accomplish world peace.
“I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.”-Diane Ackerman
May the words we read allow us to gain knowledge. May we allow this knowledge to lead us forward along with faith, and may we come to find true wisdom through the footnotes and foot notes of life.
Footnotes
Footnotes, little fine print at the bottom of the page,
Is there time when we read to engage
With the words to a deeper extent
So that upon the earth we can extend
Knowledge to others around
Beyond college and classroom bounds
To the human spirits searching for peace
Within the hurting the world sees.
Footnotes, in italics and other print forms
Whose rows and lines indent the pages margins with scores
Of information and facts to infinity
Whose transformation has the potential to stretch the seed
Of the mind to form and grow
Forth from the row
Taking upon life
Making the dawn bright.
Foot notes, mental thoughts to remember
From January frost to snow in December,
From dawn to dust
Fawn in rust
To doe in gray
Along the road we take
To and from and back and forth
Allowing us to come, to have, and to become more.
-Lisa A. Wisniewski
A Note of Thanks
Our thanks this week goes out to my late grandfather, Frank Klobuchar. Though I did not know him since he passed before I was born, I do know stories about him and one of the great stories was him giving each newly-wed couple who came into his furniture store a copy of a Bible. The Bible was a huge tome, a Catholic Croatian version with added sections of pictures. For years, Gram kept a single left over copy of this Bible in a box in a cabinet at our house.
At one point, I took the Bible from the box and started reading it. Admittedly, it was hard at first since I had to do some translation of the Croatian names and reference a more modern Bible to understand the text. However, after years of turning those pages and reading the daily mass and other readings from this Bible, things have become clearer. This Bible has a lot of footnotes, some taking up over a quarter of a page! Reading the footnotes in this book this week was the inspiration behind this post. We thank my grandfather for passing on his faith to others in known and unknown ways, and we believe he is watching over us from heaven and laughing his head off at all our adventures and misadventures on the family property.
-Lisa, Leo, and Lena
Natural Deltas 