These days, I haven't spent much time reading. Most of my hours are spent assembling jigsaw puzzles. It is my new time consumer. I started a new book today, hoping that this one will find completion and a place in my rocket reads. I have amassed quite a few reads that haven't made it to completion. I can think of a few reasons I didn't cross the finish line with them.
1. I lost interest with the content
2. I got the message in the first few chapters and the remaining content seemed to be redundant.
3. I felt guilty for investing time in the content.
4. The read wasn't what I had anticipated.
5. I found that the material was already covered in previous books.
6. I started reading another book more captivating.
7. My short attention span wins out.
8. My eyes got tired.
9. My brain got tired.
10. The finish line was just too far away.
So many possibilities. This morning I thought of going into my unfinished reads and pulling out some quotes to share. Just because I didn't finish the book, doesn't mean some wisdom wasn't gleaned. I must have found something worth sharing before I abandoned the book.
Let's see what I can find...
"The Knowledge Seeker" Blair Stonechild
"In the Indigenous world view, all Creation is sacred and spiritually alive. As one Elder described it, once a person set foot outside his lodge, the entire world was his church. Land is a living entity that must be treated with respect. Spirituality is to be practised daily rather than merely written about or practised in a rigid institutional setting.
Underlying all Aboriginal belief is a view of a world gifted by Manitow. Our purpose on earth is to develop an understanding of how to live in harmony with all of Creation."
"The Knowledge Seeker" is a book that originally enticed me because I wanted to learn more about the First Nations in Canada from a first person perspective. I still do. The whole perspective that the Earth is a sanctuary is attractive and inspiring to me. I treasure the respect the Indigenous people have for all of nature.
"The Anabaptist Story" William R. Estep
"It was a foregone conclusion that if the Swiss Reformation were to continue within the context of a state church, Manz must go. The mandate demanding the death penalty for rebaptizing had been issued the previous March, but it had not as yet been enforced. The time had come for the crucial test, and the first victim was to be Felix Manz."
I was first drawn to learn more about the Anabaptists, because they are my ancestors and my heritage, and I am technically an Anabaptist. I was baptized as a baby in a Lutheran church and then baptized as an adult in my thirties in a Pentecostal church. Five hundred years earlier what I did could have cost me my life. But instead, my Lutheran parents came and witnessed my baptism.
Now... being agnostic, my baptisms are strictly cultural for me, but still hold a value because of what others went through a half a millennium ago. I am the child of two religious cultures. If I go back far enough... I can imagine one set of ancestors lighting the fires under the pyre of other set of ancestors. We, as a human species, have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.
"A New Earth" Eckart Tolle
"How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them. In the meantime, just be aware of your attachment to things. Sometimes you may not know that you are attached to something, which is to say, identified, until you lose it or there is the threat of loss. If you then become upset, anxious, and so on, it means you are attached. If you are aware that you are identified with a thing, the identification is no longer total. “I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment.” That’s the beginning of the transformation of consciousness."
Maybe this book was one that gave me enough just in the first few chapters. I did listen to some of Eckart Tolle's stuff on Youtube. I just didn't finish the book. But his understanding of self helped me in my journey.
"Grounded" Diana Butler Bass
" “What did you do to try to shift their awareness from a vertical faith to a more horizontal one?” I queried the Kentucky pastor.
“We planted a garden,” he replied. “We grow food. Lots of food. For the local food bank. We’ve studied the soil and learned about global warming. We’re finding God in the garden. It isn’t quite as vertical as it used to be. Heaven is getting downright earthy.”
And that, of course, is another vision of heaven: a garden. Where dirt, water, and air all come together to feed us, to heal the earth, to produce the atmosphere we need to survive. Paradise, really. Here and now. "
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