Garys Books: Make a List

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Make a List

Book: Make a List: How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts
Basic Information : Synopsis : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References

Basic Information:

Author: Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Edition: epub on Libby from Los Angeles Public Library

Publisher: Eerdmans

ISBN: 9780802875747 (ISBN10: 0802875742)

Start Date: January 2, 2024

Read Date: January 13, 2024

202 pages

Genre: Christianity, Personal Growth

Language Warning: None

Rated Overall: 3½ out of 5

Synopsis:

The author has lists for everything. But not so much as ToDo’s, even though she has that. She makes lists as a means to help her focus her thoughts, to remember things she holds precious. The book is broken into three parts:

Why Make a List?
Listing as a Way of Life
Her personal lists

Each part has several chapters, each two to four pages long. Each chapter ends with a challenge to make a list upon the theme of the chapter.

Expectations:

Date Became Aware of Book: January 1, 2024
Why do I want to read this book: I became aware of the author when I read When Poets Pray. I am wondering what else she had to say.
What do I think I will get out of it? While she will not be one of my top authors, there was enough there to get me interested. I am wondering if she has a more effective means of making lists.

Thoughts:

I may take down some(all?) of the exercises from the book. I suspect I may have over down it in trying to get good notes.

Introduction: Living by Lists

Making lists is a learning experience. While the ToDo lists are useful, it is the other ones she finds more topical which helps her out. The list of things which lists do for her include:

Lists are mirrors: you look at what you’ve written down, no matter what the content, a list shows you something about what has come to matter to you

Lists are a way of learning
Lists are a way of listening-to your self
Lists are a way of loving: Paying attention is the first step toward love
Lists are way way of letting go
Lists may become a prayer practice

The book is in three parts:

Part I, I provide a series of reflections on the purposes and pleasures of list-making.
Part II, I offer more specific reflections on particular life situations in which lists may become instruments of illumination or direction or discernment
Part III, I offer a number of my lists, written on a variety of occasions, along with stories about how they grew

Part I: Why Make a List? Lists serve a surprising variety of purposes. Here are a few reasons to make them.

To discover subtle layers of feeling

List making slows down a person, causing them to ponder. Each chapter in this part has Some Lists to Try:

Seven kinds of satisfaction
What’s underneath the anger
What happens in the aftermath
Feelings I tend to suppress
When I am most content

To name what you want

Knowing what you want isn’t as simple or obvious a matter as it might seem. Moves you from the fog of generality to things which are specific.

Things I’ve begun wanting recently
Things I’ve wanted for the last five minutes
Things I’ve wanted for more than five years
Things I want for the next generation
Things I’d like to stop wanting

To clarify your concerns

This can be any concern-political, national, or persona.

Concerns about [a particular loved one]
Who is attending to public concerns I care about
Undue pressures on young people I love
When to speak out
How to sustain my own mental/emotional health

To decide what to let go of

This can be physical such as clothing, books or stuff. Or it can be emotional baggage. No doubt all of us are intimately familiar with our own specific tendencies to “clutch and cling.”

What needs reclassification as clutter
What to give away to whom
What is no longer useful to me
What old resentments I can relinquish
Where I still need to accept forgiveness

To help dispel a few fears

Naming a fear can help make it seem less formable. Ask What I’m afraid of? And then come up with a list of why or what.

Fears for the children I care about
Ways of addressing my favorite fears
Changes I find threatening
“Irrational” fears
Texts that help me with my fears

To claim what gives you joy

Kondo’s general idea is a good one: pay attention to what helps you choose life and live it joyfully, and let go of whatever inhibits that freedom of spirit. Just because it is expensive does not mean it needs to be held onto.

What happens on my best days
How to enjoy what I have
Small things that make her/him glad
What I know now about happiness
How to decommercialize Christmas

To find out what you still have to learn

Part of learning is to identify uncertainties, gaps, anomalies and complexities. My first days in graduate school offered me a new occasion for learning that my learning was incomplete. …

Every gap opens a door to new learning, and gives us a chance to practice what the Buddhists beautifully call “beginner’s mind

Things I’d like to know about my bioregion
Things I’d like to understand about the Bible
Things I’d like to understand about Islam
Where ignorance gets dangerous
Questions I’d like to ask [name your expert here]

To put new words to old experiences

In McEntyre’s experience, there is a tendency for the lists to become poetic-she does teach poetry.

What lay just outside the photo frame
Unhelpful euphemisms
Other answers—besides “Fine”—to “How are you?”
Phrases worth remembering
Words I’ve never thought to use to describe my father

To get at the questions behind the questions

I learned to begin a research project with a list of twenty-five questions about the topic. Then I would whittle down the list of questions by considering which were most inviting, intriguing, helpful—which ones gave me energy and made me want to find out more.

She thinks one should ask why is the question being asked? Why is it a concern? A simple way to go “deeper” is to ask, “What am I really wanting to know?” or “Why has this come to matter to me now?” or, alternatively, “How might this question be diverting my attention from a question I’m avoiding asking?

Elie Wiesel said that He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. … I pray to the God within me that he will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions. To ask questions, you must want to hear the answer.

What I wonder about my work
What’s been changing this year?
What’s drying up or dying out and why?
Is this problem my responsibility?
What am I willing to know

To find out who’s inside

Essentially these lists are to assist you in finding out who you are.

What choices do I make when I have a few hours alone?
Where would I go for refreshment and renewal if I could?
What dream images stay with me?
What irritants might I need to explore?
What takes me close to tears?

To play with possibilities

When faced with an issue, there are usually more than two sides to the issue. She goes into brainstorming-a process I have never found productive.

Ways we might relieve electronic stress
What to do with five whole minutes
One project that might improve local schools
Ways to protect kids from sugar
What a local barter system might look like

To identify complicating factors

Processes usually do not follow a straight line. Listing can help figure out why.

Why I hung on so long
Why I didn’t tell anyone
Why I keep it secret
Why I’m postponing what I so clearly want
Why I changed my mind about money

To map the middle ground

Can lists really bridge the divide we have in our country?

Positions I can afford to modify
Possible peace offerings
What lies between a new car and no new car
What might be discovered between right wing and left wing
Hills I don’t want to die on

To explore implications

Take a fact and analyze it with the following in mind:

1) If that’s true, what else is likely to be true?; or

(2) If that’s true, what else might we need to know to understand the implications of that fact

Most facts have implications, just as most acts have consequences, and it’s a good exercise to pause over them

It takes 1.39 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water
Refined sugar is more addictive than cocaine
Americans between 8 and 18 average 53 hours a week on electronic devices
Bees are essential to the human food supply
Drumming helps relieve stress

To connect the dots

William Binney-McEntyre uses him as a metaphor on being able to connect the dots. She says he invented a device which could figure out what the electronic relationship was between two people. In looking at Wikipedia, it sounds like he has conspiracy leanings.

Experiment: Choose any two public issues, but two that seem quite distant from each other, and consider how they’re connected.

Ways I personally depend on the rainforests
What connects me to the people in the local nursing home
What it means to say that children belong to all of us
Why I might need to know what high schools pay for athletic programs
Why it matters who manufactured my sofa

To get to your learning edge

Lists can go on for what seems like forever. McEntyre thinks that is the trick. As a literature teacher she urges her students to continue adding until they get just beyond the point where they think they’ve said all they have to say. Just beyond is where the surprises lie.

Fifteen (or more) facts about my grandmother’s early life
Biblical texts I find hard to interpret
Musical [or other field of your choice] terms I’d like to understand
Why read [a favorite author]—or the daily news or South Indian novels
What I need to know to be a better gardener

To notice what you might have missed

A list can help you appreciate what is familiar. Familiar places are similarly worth revisiting

How her face is changing
What’s new in the garden
What I hadn’t noticed about my nephew
What lies between the lines
Quiet corners where things have been happening

To experience deep attention

Look deeper into a subject, even a mundane or that which you do everyday.

How I recognize summonings
Small things to do with great love
Unspoken needs I’m noticing around me
Where personal and public life meet
When I “find myself

To enjoy complete permission

Lists can cause you to concentrate on what you should not be doing. McEntyre says that lists should also give you permission to do things.

lectio divina—an ancient exercise of reading Scripture slowly, listening for a word or phrase to dwell on

Lent: A Time of Permission-McEntyre did a talk on this subject.

Permissions I need to give myself
Where I feel unpermitted
Who needs my permission
Permissions I’ve found in Scripture
What I can afford to allow, even though it annoys me

Part II: The Way of the List-Maker

There aren’t many “rules” in list-making, but there are reliable ways to make lists useful, beautiful, and fun. Here are a few to try out.

Things to do to the to-do list: Exploring priorities and intentions

Even if a ToDo list is ignored, they can help give direction, funneling your imagination into constructive ways. Her To Do list includes:

Things to do for the homeless here in town
Show up at church and make sandwiches
Stop and talk a little
Support the local food bank
Find out who’s running the shelters and what they need
Buy extra supplies when you go to the drugstore
Make eye contact
Carry an extra blanket to give away when it’s cold
Listen to their stories and relay them

OR TRY PLAYING WITH ONE OF THESE:

Things to do when I’m feeling down
Things to do more often with the ones I love
Things to do to improve the world if I can’t save it
Things to do with small children
Things to delegate

How to do almost anything: How how-to lists help you learn how

A list is a starting place, not the end of the thought process.

How to get more out of boring meetings
How to reclaim what’s getting lost in the noise and haste
How to spend good time with a person with dementia
How to cope with a steady stream of bad news
How to be a better friend

Playing favorites: Lists that clarify values

Favorite films of the past five years
Favorite political commentators and journalists
Favorite ways to care for my body and well-being
Favorite gifts I’ve been given
Favorite lines from poems or songs

The wonder of word lists: How word lists empower, educate, and amuse

As an exercise, she has her students write down all the things which lights does-she gives them one minute. This could also be a list of phrases instead of a word.

Shades of red
Antique words that deserve to be retrieved
Words I like just because they’re delicious
Phrases from our family culture
What babies do with their bodies

Allowing lament: How lists open a space for sorrow

Things I will miss about her
What weighs on my heart
Cracks where the light gets in
What I see when I descend to the depths
Losses that have changed me

How a list becomes a poem: Lists that work in ways you hadn’t planned

Many poems begin as lists—or are lists. But I do not think that McEntyre is saying all lists are poems. She does say that not all lists are poems. Lists become poems when poetic devices come into play, … this may be a conscientious choice or one which just happens.

What she brought with her into the room
Moments I had almost forgotten
What I really needed
Small things that have mattered
What I must be willing to witness

How a list becomes a prayer: When lists lead you to your longings

Lists can become rote or a tool to remind us who to pray for. all of us need, periodically, to ask again, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The prayer list should help us connect the person with our prayers.

Policymakers under pressure
What leaders are carrying
What help may be needed now
What needs to be clarified
What comfort might look like

A long second look: Lists that teach you how to look again

Lists can create linkage between old and new.

She taught a class called A Second Look at Certain Books-a class where everybody has read the books to be discussed at least once.

McEntyre talks about her father: I was stricken to realize how much I didn’t know about the man who had brought us kids up.

Things I’ve found just behind the obvious
Things Mom might have said
What my civics teacher seems to have left out
Missed opportunities to be reclaimed
Corrections for the record: Things to explain at my funeral

Memento mori: Lists that commemorate

She reminisces about the singers of her youth who played at Joan Baez’ 75 birthday. She makes the comment that remembering doesn’t mean returning so much as reassembling. Not sure what she means by that. She talks about piecing together what time has made fuzzy. Chana Bloch puts it, “the past keeps changing.” … The key to commemoration is specifics

What I remember about my aunt
What seventh grade felt like
What war looks like
Those who made the difference
How we knew he was called to be a coach

Switching lenses: Lists that reframe

She talks about seeing old things in new terms. Maybe something assumed which is now shown to be false. It also can be playful

Valuable distractions
What to neglect
What doesn’t matter as much as I thought
When pieties don’t play well
When to harden my heart

Better than a punching bag: Lists that open a safe space for anger

These are lists of grievances.

Why I think this indignation is righteous
What I need to defuse the fury
Why they might be angry
What keeps us at odds
How small irritants grew into big outrage

Lists for life review: How lists help focus the backward glance

Ira Progoff, whose “journal workshops”. He is dead, but his work lives on through some workshops. Also he has several books on journaling. He advocates a process he called “Life Review.” The idea is to list significant moments in your life each year.

It’s worth noticing how we narrate our stories to ourselves. How we cast our life shows how we think about ourselves. This changes as we change. One of the functions of our sacred texts is to help us recognize ourselves as characters in a much larger narrative than our own.

Moments of insight
When “where” mattered
Gifts from guides
What I edit out
What I no longer need to do

Cracking open clichés: Lists that get behind the surfaces

The difference between those [simple truths] and clichés that quash emotional truths lies in whether they close down those felt moments or open them up to empathy and to whatever silence or conversation might occur. …clichés if there weren’t truth in them.

When I’ve been “asleep at the wheel”
What might be needing “a stitch in time”
What it’s going to take to get “back in the saddle”
When I “beat around the bush”
Where I might need to “blow the whistle.”

Wanting what you want: Lists that identify unidentified desires

Useful for learning what you really want.

Things I wanted and never got
Things I want that I believe would truly enhance my life and growth
Things I wish I didn’t want
What I’ve learned about my wants
Things I used to want but don’t anymore

Talking points: Lists that illuminate your message

Vagueness is often a mark of ignorance, evasiveness, or inexperience—and it can be dangerous

What I’ve decided about my diet
What everyone needs to know about climate change
Why I won’t allow you to stare at a screen for more than two hours a day
Why I avoid shopping at _________
Why faith matters

Thin places and sacred spaces: Lists as guides to path-finding

TSElliot “Little Gidding”

You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid

These beautiful lines remind readers that the purposes of pilgrimage may be, as Eliot put it, “beyond the end you figured, and . . . altered in fulfillment. The idea is a place where you can be alone and open yourself up.

Pilgrimage places I’d like to visit
Special rooms and sacred objects
Ancestral sites
Buildings that open my heart when I enter them
Natural objects I keep, hold, or visit

Love letters: Lists that count the ways

Saying I love you is the most basic form. The poet also says let me count the ways. Love letters should be interesting and fun.

Lovingyou.com - May be obsolete
Romanceforeveryone.com - May be obsolete
Loveletters.boston.com

Things I’ve thought but haven’t said
What I noticed last time we went out
What I’ve missed since you’ve been gone
What I probably remember that you probably don’t
What I see unfolding in you

Litanies: Lists that help you relax into prayer

With the word litany there is a sense of lists and a lot of times negative, such as going through things by rote. But there is the sense of ceremony as well. She references the Anglican “Great Litany

Summary statements: Listing for retrospection

A good summary will give what are the main points of something. It is more than just a play-by-play of an event or story.

How the conflict developed
What’s changed since I came of age
What my co-workers are hoping for
What I believe now
The eulogy I’d like someone to deliver

Part III: Play Lists

Lists are a way of opening up “play space.” This section is an invitation to play—to tinker with each other’s lists, to use the ones provided here as templates for your own, to move lines around and change the mood and marvel at your own ingenuity. Consider, as you read these lists and the short reflections that follow each of them, where whimsy, need, poetic inclinations, and playful imagination might take you.

McEntyre provides us with her own lists and some challenges. Sort of like she has done all along. But now they are the main focus.

A List-Maker’s Master List

List making may become a way of life, replacing other activities. I think she is being too optimistic in this. Also I think she is thinking that lists are too important.

Why read?

This is an example of a list of Why?

She talks back to her book. When I read, I enter into conversation; good reading isn’t just a one-way street. This is a trick I learned from Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book. Perhaps the best thing reading does is raise new questions, or old ones in new contexts. Why care? How do we know? What shapes our ends?

Why read?
To rearrange what you thought you knew
To converse with unavailable people
It’s cheaper than shopping
To restock your conversational larder
To counteract creeping media mindlessness
To see how others do it
To taste the flavor of words
For the joy of a graceful sentence
To get better-quality gossip
To discover new questions
To go places you can’t get to otherwise
And come back changed

AN INVITATION TO MY FELLOW LIST-MAKERS:

Here are several prompts for lists about reading:
Phrases that have stayed with me
Why read [your favorite author]?
Books I would retitle
The most enjoyable scenes in my reading life
My favorite nonfiction

What tennis teaches

Sometimes activities can teach us things about life. She uses tennis in this regard. What the body learns, the mind turns into metaphor, or into parable, or into an organizing insight.

Pick a sport or craft or hobby or activity and consider what it has taught you, listing those things as they occur to you. Even the apparently trivial learning moments matter: learning to take small, even stitches in quilting; learning to bend from the waist in yoga; learning to offer or respond to slight pressure from your partner’s hand when you dance. Assign yourself seven things, or ten, and then write a short reflection on how those learnings or lessons have served your deeper, more enduring purposes.

A manifesto for amateurs

Amateur, from the Latin amator, is a happy word: it means “lover

One general definition of a manifesto is “a public declaration of policy or aims.” Try writing one, including intentions, insights, permissions, and a few challenges to “common sense.” One of these, for instance:

A manifesto for moms (or dads or grandparents)
A manifesto for the Sunday-morning faithful
A manifesto for Monday mornings
A manifesto for the family cook
A manifesto for the electronically overwhelmed

See what happens when you combine serious intention with irony or amusement; varying the tone may serve more than stylistic purposes.

How to defeat bureaucracy

How-to lists appeal to most of us because most of us need and want specific guidance about and here she lists a variety of things. She goes on list making is not only gaining expertise, but also clarifying things. When it comes to bureaucracy, the key is to know what you want.

Make a how-to list for yourself, considering as specifically as you can what’s involved in a process that matters to you, even if you feel you’re not sure exactly how to approach it. For example, you might consider how to take on problems like these:

How to manage electronic overload
How to disappoint people and still like yourself
How to get out the door on time
How to use insomnia to your advantage
Or you might simply see how well you can articulate a process others might find baffling:
How to get an item on the city council’s agenda
How to get reliable news and avoid information overload
How to have an inner life when your outer life is fully booked

What’s fun after fifty

Note really pertinent: David Mamet: “Age and treachery will always overcome youth and exuberance.

Being aged allows you to enjoy the smaller things in life.

Consider fun. Consider what’s not fun. (As a friend of mine wryly observed on irritating occasions, “This is not fun. I’ve had fun. This is not it.”) Consider what’s become fun only recently. Or what you can’t believe you’re enjoying now because you would have hated it ten years ago. And see where one of these lists takes you:

Fun I never thought I’d have
Slightly guilty pleasures
Why it’s fun to spend time alone
“Fun” I don’t have to pretend to have anymore
Deepening pleasures

What marriage teaches

Adapt the list of things marriage teaches to reflect your own (perhaps on the occasion of an anniversary): “What this marriage has taught me.”

Consider one of the life practices marriage has taught you and expand it. For instance, if marriage has taught you to hold your peace a little longer, you might try a list called “What I’ve learned to wait for”—again, as a gift to surprise a spouse.

Or feel free to write a campy, funny, satirical variation—maybe “What I’ve learned not to do.” Though I make this suggestion with a reminder not to make the edges too sharp!

Other mothers

These are the mothers (or adults?) who have helped develop you. They can be neighbors or authors. items on a list often generate new lists. There is a tendency for these lists to fall into chronological order.

List your “significant others”—mothers, fathers, teachers, guides, instructive adversaries—by name, including one thing they did for you that was formative in some way. Here are a few examples:
Auntie Ruth, who showed me that good humor can have an edge
Mrs. Robidart, who bought more Girl Scout cookies than she could eat
Louisa May Alcott, with whom I spent many happy hours in my treehouse
Mrs. Hinkson, who began every class with a song
Jo, who held up a mirror when I needed to see

Where the Spirit moves

At times McEntyre would focus herself on the different parts of the Trinity. It’s a good exercise to name the people and places where God is likely to show up. And then she quotes John Donne’s “A Hymn to God the Father” which concludes each confessional stanza with this refrain: “When thou hast done, thou has not done, for I have more.”

Consider specifically where the Spirit has moved in your life and through your days and adapt the above list to make it a personal inventory of awareness.
Rename the list and develop it in a slightly different direction—“Where grace has been given” or “When God showed up” or “Small surprises that made a big difference.”
Imagine rewriting this list with a particular person or situation in mind—as a message of comfort for someone who is ill; as a bit of religious instruction for a child preparing for confirmation; as a celebratory retrospective for a significant birthday

Appendix:

A Few Final Lists for Your General Enjoyment

What the beach teaches

What weddings require

The benefits of bicycling

When to call home

Why children enchant us

Where to dance

What you get from a garden

How to be happy in high school

What leaders learn

Listen

A manifesto for moving day

What every adult should be able to do

What teachers can tell you

What’s worth waiting for

Times to practice trust

Evaluation:

Lists can be dry. Lists can be demanding. Lists can be monotonous. Lists can be revealing. Which of those statements do not belong?

Marilyn McEntyre notes that all are possible. In her book, Make a List, she concentrates on the last. In her book she concentrates on what do they reveal. The book is written in three parts:

Why Make a List?
Listing as a Way of Life
Her personal lists

Each part has several short chapters where she reveals some of her lists and usually ends with a challenge to make your own list. Some of the chapters includes titles like:

To get at the questions behind the questions
Wanting what you want: Lists that identify unidentified desires
Why Read?

Each chapter shows how a list can lead you deeper into knowing yourself, knowing your friends and family, and knowing issues which surround us.

The fault of this book is the repetitiveness. McEntyre has more than enough topics to get you on the right track to make your lists. For me, once I got the idea of what she was doing and then pointed me to the types of subjects which a list could be used for, I was set. When there was up to twenty subjects per part, I started to glaze over.

If you expect a book about how to make ToDo lists more effective, this book is not it. But if you are looking for a way to be introspective, Make A List can be a good guide.

Notes from my book group:

What lists do you currently make? What lists are you interested in making now that you have read the book?

At the end of most of the chapters McEntyre has a project for the reader to take on. Which ones did you find of interest? What did you discover about yourself?

McEntyre says that One of the functions of our sacred texts is to help us recognize ourselves as characters in a much larger narrative than our own. When you read a sacred text, do you recognize that? What difference does that make?

How do you want your life to change because you read this book?

Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.

Why the title of Make A List?

Does this book work towards improving how you view yourself?

Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? In what context was religion talked about in this book?

Why do you think the author wrote this book?

What would you ask the author if you had a chance?

What “takeaways” did you have from this book?

How did this book affect your view of the world?

Of how God is viewed?

What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?

Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?

What was memorable?

New Words:

Marginalia: marks made in the margins of a book or other document. They may be scribbles, comments, glosses (annotations), critiques, doodles, drolleries, or illuminations.

Book References:

Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Night by Elie Wiesel
Dream Work by Jeremy Taylor
The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein
Moby-Dick by
“Litany of Lament” by Joan de Vries
War and Peace By Leo Tolstoy
Measure of My Days by Scott-Maxwell
Language and Silence by George Steiner
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Hours by Auden
The Death of Common Sense by Philip Howard
Little Women by Louise May Alcott
Winnie-the-Pooh by AA Milne
The Odyssey by Homer
Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Poor Richard’s Almanac by Benjamin Franklin’s

Good Quotes:

First Line: I list a lot
Last Line: When you’ve lit the candle and said the prayer
Paying attention is the first step toward love. Chp Introduction: Living by Lists
One of the functions of our sacred texts is to help us recognize ourselves as characters in a much larger narrative than our own. Chp Lists for life review
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and exuberance. David Mamet interview with Bruce Weber, “THEATER; At 50, a Mellower David Mamet May Be Ready to Tell His Story,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 1997.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Living by Lists
Part I: Why Make a List? Lists serve a surprising variety of purposes. Here are a few reasons to make them.

To discover subtle layers of feeling
To name what you want
To clarify your concerns

To decide what to let go of
To help dispel a few fears
To claim what gives you joy

To find out what you still have to learn
To put new words to old experiences
To get at the questions behind the questions
To find out who’s inside
To play with possibilities
To identify complicating factors
To map the middle ground
To explore implications
To connect the dots
To get to your learning edge
To notice what you might have missed
To experience deep attention
To enjoy complete permission

Part II: The Way of the List-Maker There aren’t many “rules” in list-making, but there are reliable ways to make lists useful, beautiful, and fun. Here are a few to try out.

Things to do to the to-do list: Exploring priorities and intentions
How to do almost anything: How how-to lists help you learn how
Playing favorites: Lists that clarify values
The wonder of word lists: How word lists empower, educate, and amuse
Allowing lament: How lists open a space for sorrow
How a list becomes a poem: Lists that work in ways you hadn’t planned
How a list becomes a prayer: When lists lead you to your longings
A long second look: Lists that teach you how to look again
Memento mori: Lists that commemorate
Switching lenses: Lists that reframe
Better than a punching bag: Lists that open a safe space for anger
Lists for life review: How lists help focus the backward glance
Cracking open clichés: Lists that get behind the surfaces
Wanting what you want: Lists that identify unidentified desires
Talking points: Lists that illuminate your message
Thin places and sacred spaces: Lists as guides to path-finding
Love letters: Lists that count the ways
Litanies: Lists that help you relax into prayer
Summary statements: Listing for retrospection

Part III: Play Lists. Lists are a way of opening up “play space.” This section is an invitation to play—to tinker with each other’s lists, to use the ones provided here as templates for your own, to move lines around and change the mood and marvel at your own ingenuity. Consider, as you read these lists and the short reflections that follow each of them, where whimsy, need, poetic inclinations, and playful imagination might take you.

A List-Maker’s Master List
Why read?
What tennis teaches
A manifesto for amateurs
How to defeat bureaucracy
What’s fun after fifty
What marriage teaches
Other mothers
Where the Spirit moves

Appendix:

A Few Final Lists for Your General Enjoyment
What the beach teaches
What weddings require
The benefits of bicycling
When to call home
Why children enchant us
Where to dance
What you get from a garden
How to be happy in high school
What leaders learn
Listen
A manifesto for moving day
What every adult should be able to do
What teachers can tell you
What’s worth waiting for
Times to practice trust

References:

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Make a List

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