Monica Sharman’s “Behold the Beauty”

It’s an invitation to engage with ordinary, simple, familiar things.

A painting in an art museum. A young boy building a light-bulb circuit. A migraine headache. Searching for thimbleberries. Family rituals, like reading stories aloud. Cooking from a friend’s recipe. Reading a much-loved story from your childhood.

It is in those simple familiar things that writer Monica Sharman finds beauty, and more than beauty. In the beauty of the ordinary she finds metaphors for Bible reading, and has collected those metaphors in Behold the Beauty: An Invitation to Bible Reading.

Her invitation is as simple as the beauty she writes about: “Come with me. Come to that which our ears can hear, our eyes can see, and our hands touch. Extend your hands. Take hold of the Bible, the very words of God Himself.”

This is not a call to excitement and thrills. This is a call to a deliberate, thoughtful walk, a walk with senses alert, yes, but a walk in the quiet things of the everyday. It’s an important call, because we spend most of our lives in the quiet things of the everyday.

And it is there that is the best place to read the words of God.

Monica Sharman

In addition to reading about God’s word, Sharman provides small anecdotes about herself and her family – a hike, a vacation by train, an over-stimulated baby, her own experiences with God at CalTech, where she majored in physics. Each anecdote is carefully woven into the fabric of the story she is telling. And Sharman is a storyteller, a storyteller who seems familiar because she is telling our stories as she tells her own. (Be sure to read the preface by writer Jean Fleming; she knows about Sharman and her storytelling abilities.)

Each relatively short chapter includes practical, simple suggestions – what Scriptures to read, questions to ask (and answer), ideas to try out. She suggests paying special attention to how Scripture uses metaphors and repetition, how conversations develop, how details help tell the story, why the setting is so often so important, and other helpful practices.

Behold the Beauty is written by a woman who loves God’s word and is eager to share that love in practical, familiar ways.

Painting: A Girl with a Broom, oil on canvas; artist unknown but possibly Carel Fabritius, about 1651; National Gallery, Washington, D.C. This is the painting that so captured Monica Sharman’s imagination, as she describes in Behold the Beauty.

Review of "Dancing Priest"

Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God has posted a review of my first novel, Dancing Priest. And I have to say, she nailed it -- she caught exactly what I was trying to do and hoping that I'd done with the novel.

So take a look -- the review is short, succinct and right to the point.

Jean Fleming’s “Pursue the Intentional Life”

The art of the journal is practiced for any number of reasons – to remember what we might forget; make observations; remember significant words, phrases, quotations, and ideas; take notes; and so on. It was some years ago that I noticed people at work beginning to take up “journaling” – to keep track of the multitude of meetings required in modern organizational work life.

I keep a journal, too, for all of the above reasons, but most of all for writing drafts of articles, blog posts, and poems. Sometimes I combine several of those journaling functions – and take notes from a sermon in the form of poems, for example.

Jean Fleming is a mother, grandmother, and former member of The Navigators staff, with assignments in California, Korea, Colorado, Arizona, Seattle, and Colorado. She is also the author of several books: A Mother’s Heart, Feeding Your Soul: A Quiet Time Handbook, Finding Focus in a Whirlwind World, and The Homesick Heart: Longing for Spiritual Intimacy. Fleming also keeps a journal, which has been transformed into Pursue the Intentional Life.

This is not simply a reprint of a writer’s notes, jottings, and observations. Instead, Fleming has created a cohesive understanding of why life should be pursued intentionally, that life is not simply something “that happens” but is instead filled with purpose and meaning, and often profound meaning.

“Numbering my days,” she writes, “forces me to confront universal and irreducible truths. Life is short. Soon my life on earth will give way to my life in heaven. Rather than leading to panic, the reality leads to a peaceful and settled urgency. Although thoughts of heaven are so lovely to consider, the Lord reminds me that my short stay on earth is my only chance to honor Him with faith and faithfulness. Isn’t this, after all, gaining a heart of wisdom?”

And gaining a heart of wisdom is what lies at the core of Pursue the Intentional Life. This is a book meant to be read slowly and savored, with wisdom and experience reflected on every page. It isn’t a “finding joy in 10 easy steps” book that can be devoured in a few hours and then tossed aside, forgotten like most of those books should be. It is a thoughtful, carefully constructed, work, filled with what Fleming has learned about faith, life and God over a lifetime.

She also de-romanticizes what a life of faith is, even including a chapter with that title. Life is hard. Faith is hard. But both life and faith offer great reward.

Pursue the Intentional Life is what I’d call a wisdom book. It’s not a book that could have been written by a millennial or a GenX-er. It’s not a book written for people focused on time management and squeezing even more activities into a hectic schedule. It is a book written, as writer Monica Sharman suggests in the foreword, for people asking the question, “What kind of woman (or man) am I becoming?”

And Fleming answers that question with insight and grace.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads – TweetSpeak Poetry

Little did I know that when I improvised a short poem (contained within one tweet on Twitter) back in 2009 that it would me to a regular Twitter poetry jam; editing the tweets from the jams into poems; a blog created to contain the poems; other stuff (reviews and features) being added to the blog; and then a business enterprise that goes by the name of TweetSpeak Poetry.

Currently, I’m a weekly columnist for TweetSpeak (Tuesdays) and one of the things – just one – we’re up to is beginning to get our heads around the idea of poetry and business. I do reviews of poetry books, reflections, recollections, whatever sounds interesting.

I love being a columnist.

I work with a terrific team, led by chief instigator, central plotter, primary conspirator, writer, editor, publisher, poet, mother, wife, blogger, tea expert, lighthouse climber and who-knows-what-else Laura Barkat. Laura, or L.L., is the Grand Poobah of TweetSpeak (that sounds like a title from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical opera). She has three blogs: Seedlings in Stone, Love Notes to Yahweh, and Green Inventions Central.

She’s also written a memoir, Stone Crossings; a book of spiritual exercises, God in the Yard; a book of poems, Inside/Out; and a novella, The Novelist.

The editor for TweetSpeak is Lyla Lindquist, who is not only editor but also chief publicist, social media captain, writer, promoter, columnist, book club discussion leader and skunk works leader. Lyla is here, there and everywhere, and all at once. What she’s capable of doing leaves me in awe. She blogs at A Different Story, and also has a collection of reports and meditations about weekly visits to a Benedictine monastery for six months, called Making Headroom.

Then there’s Claire Burge. Claire is young (at my age, virtually everyone I know is young) but knows everything and how to do everything. She knew about Pinterest before Pinterest knew about Pinterest. She takes beautiful photographs (I used one for the cover of my novel Dancing Priest, and will be using another for an upcoming novella), travels to exotic places, knows everything about social media, and lets nothing intimidate her. She blogs at Claire Burge.

Monica Sharman has an official title of Editorial Intern, but she’s all over poetry, all over the business of poetry, all over our poetry jams on Twitter. Monica blogs at Know-Love-Obey God about faith, family, poetry and writing. She’s also a contributing writer to online publications like Bibledude.

Tania Runyan is a columnist for TweetSpeak, and is also a published poet, with three books of poetry: A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and she received an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011. Tania is a tutor, writer, gardener and fiddle and mando player. Her web site: Tania Runyan.

Charity Singleton, another contributing writer, is a poet, writer, blogger, and works in online media for her Midwestern employer. She blogs at Wide Open Spaces, and I have to say it’s one of my favorite blogs to read.

And then there’s my friend Seth Haines. Seth is an attorney (but a nice guy in spite of that); he and his wife Amber are raising four boys in Arkansas. Seth is a writer, poet, and sometime theologian. He writes TweetSpeak’s weekly poetry prompt on Mondays. Seth blogs at Seth Haines.

TweetSpeak Poetry is a fine group of people – and a fine group of writers. Despite its origins as a place to deposit poems from poetry jams, it has become a presence in the field of poetry, and has plans to become even more.

An Addendum to the RAP

On Friday at the High Calling Blogs, I had a post for the Random Acts of Poetry about “The Poems We Come From.” The prompt for the poems submitted was to name a poem that you had first read or experienced in high school or school (or anywhere else) that had had an impact on you, and then to write a poem about it.

And the poems came in. We had poems representing Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, Luci Shaw – and even Johnny Cash. One poet even did a YouTube video of his poem, and another submitted the video of the Johnny Cash song that had inspired her. It was amazing.

We had to establish a deadline for the submissions, but another one came in (and yet another may still come in), and I offered to note it here.

Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God wrote a moving story about the poem she selected. She was not the first of her family to go to college, but she was the first to live on campus, and the reason was that her parents had separated and sold the home she had lived in since kindergarten. She became part of a Bible study, and that led her to write a poem. And that is the poem she came from.

And this is from the new poem, entitled “Nothing,” she submitted:

He began the poem with a question,
“Who shall?”
and so I questioned, I wondered:
Indeed, who shall?
I began to read a list
of potential separators
and wondered,
which of these is the thing
that shall separate me,
that shall tear me
from God’s love?
Which of these?
The list continued
and, unsure, I worried.
The answer did not come
and did not come.
It was a long list…

Visit Monica’s place to read the whole story and the rest of the poem. And visit the High Calling Blogs to see all of the poems submitted.

Photograph: Tree in Fog at Night by Petr Kratochvil via Public Doman Pictures.

The 13th Day of Community: Monica Sharman

Last month, a number of us participating in the “Twelve Days of Community” (see the button at the top right) sponsored by The High Calling Blogs. The purpose was to highlight the blog or web site of someone other than ourselves during the season of Advent and Christmas. I made a point in each post about this was something we should be doing throughout the year, and now I’m putting my money where my mouth was.

Each week this year, I will highlight a blog or web site of a person whose thoughts and writing have had an impact on me and others. And today is the first one for 2010 – Monica Sharman.

Monica and her husband Charles have three boys. Charles is the author of Through the Bible with My Child, a plan for studying the Bible with young children in four years. (All proceeds from the book go to support a ministry in India.) And she is a former engineer.

Monica explains on her blog, Know-Love-Obey God, that she has three purposes, which came as a result of a study she did in March 2008 of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians: the advancement of the gospel, the edification of His Church, and the glory of His name.

Those three purposes play out across her writing. And what wonderful writing it is, saturated by her love for God.

In December, she did a guest post at Ann Voskamp’s blog, A Holy Experience. She used the metaphors of coins to describe her “gratitude list,” and you have to read it to experience just how good it is. (Item No. 6 under “husband:” Crow’s feet lines in husband’s smiling eyes.)

Or consider her reflections upon reading Stone Crossings by L.L. Barkat: “Besides the state of my home and emotions, I read Stone Crossings in the same way I curled up with Ramona the Brave and Because of Winn-Dixie and The Great Gilly Hopkins—tears on the brink, heart in my throat, brows raised in anticipation over eager, unblinking eyes.”

And then there’s her poetry. She writes a lot of poetry, and it’s poetry that reaches down deep into the heart and soul. An excerpt from her poem “White:”

White is the Lamb
perfect white Lamb
taking His cup
drinking
for us
thorns piercing
blood flowing
blood from the Son of God
amazing, this blood
thick with love
though red
it washes white

Read and follow her blog. Follow her on Twitter. She has the sweetest, most discerning spirit. And you will learn, and you will immeasurably benefit yourself.