May's restful finds
what I'm reading to help me find restfulness this month
Welcome to the mid-May edition of Restful, my new and improved version of the weekend Pause newsletter. My hope for 2025 is to publish a free newsletter every other week: a contemplative invitation at the beginning of each month and a curation of my favorite finds mid-month. Below, you’ll find my favorite restful resources to help us practice rest with Jesus, others, and our own hearts this month!
Restfully,
Tamara
p.s. If you have forgotten who I am, here's the About Me section on my website. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for free posts either at my old-timey blog or at Restful, my Substack site.
The Bookshop: What I’m Reading
My Currently Reading shelf at Bookshop
Check out this eclectic book list to inspire you across genres. My current bookshelf includes titles I am reading for seminary, church, work, and fun. Bookshop supports indie bookstores, and when you purchase one of the titles from my collection, I get a little extra change toward buying my next read! Here’s a bit more about a couple of the titles on my list.
by Chaim Potok
One of the first books I read in my pursuit of deconstructing the sacred/secular divide in art and faith is Chaim Potok's much-acclaimed novel My Name is Asher Lev. Now, after nine years of leading our church’s reading group, we’re reading it together.
It still holds up as I complete my re-read, although this time I am less frustrated with little Asher Lev, less impressed with the Rabbi, and feeling an extreme dissonance for the romantic manifestos of the instructor Jacob Kahn:
Here’s the off-the-cuff review I wrote on my blog in 2010: For about eight years, I've been collecting lists of books recommended by people I admire. This novel is probably the fiction title I see most often, but for one reason or another, it's taken me all this time to read the book for myself. I liked the book, liked the characters, loved the setting and conflict in the mid-twentieth-century Brooklyn, the Hasidic community of Crown Heights, to be exact.
If it's a good characteristic of a novel to leave the reader in more conflict than resolution, this book is excellent. I really don't know how I feel about little Asher Lev and even less of the Asher Lev, come of age. I am fascinated by the conflict between his religious upbringing and his artistic ambition and obsession. He is a child prodigy and seems to have no say in his avocation, even drawing in crayon on the wall in his sleep. Sensually, and in all other ways, he lives his life through the grid of a painter. There is a sympathy for the relational strife this causes with his parents, especially his father. I'm frustrated with the myopic attitudes of his activist-absorbed father -- how can he not see the similarity of his son to his own overreaching ambitions? At the base of it, I guess, he doesn't see art as worth anything. That's the problem.
And, I'm guessing why this title lands on so many "suggested reading" lists of artists and Christians. The fundamentalist approach to utility at all costs overlooks any value in the useless forms of beauty, the invisible made visible. Perhaps, my favorite character was the Rabbi ("Rebbe") for at least sensing the paternal responsibility to "train up a child in the way he should go." But, honestly, who gets away with what Asher Lev gets away with? I struggled to feel sympathy for this self-absorbed child. Who gets to live that way? Not that I blame him, turning in on himself to survive the emotional upheavals of his mother's nervous breakdown after the death of her brother. At times, I wished I could insert myself into the story as the family counselor. Between that and desiring to find my own therapy for never feeling the permission to set the kinds of boundaries that little Asher sets for himself, intrinsically understanding his greatest call in life is to paint and draw. To learn art. Study art. Make art. He does his best to honor his father and mother, to learn Torah, and to follow religious practice. But, ultimately, he can not resist the superseding forms of beauty in nakedness and beauty in suffering. The aesthetic of cross-shaped suffering has more power over him than any other symbol in all his familiar rituals. It rules him, at the loss of home, family, and place.
I sympathize with this predicament, but I'm also jealous of the stark conflict he allows himself. He is never conscious of a decision between his art and the rest of his life. His life is fueled solely by image and palette. His relationships are formed around those values. There is no real conflict; the decision is made for him at birth. The rest is just a consequence of something that seems out of his control. In some ways, that seems like it would be the easier route than all this fussing about calling, ambition, relationships, and paychecks. Those with lesser natural talent not only have to fight for training and skill, but also fight the knowing -- am I an artist or not? Where do I place my allegiance? Hanging out with friends, cleaning my house, working a part-time job to pay a mortgage -- every single one of these choices threatens the uncultivated gift lying within. Maybe I should have read this novel when I was in a more sympathetic mood? Or, maybe, the point isn't to sympathize with Asher Lev but with the rest of us poor saps trying to make sense of this crazy ambition?
Either way, it's a good book. I'll reread it. Maybe I'll even read the sequel -- although how Asher Lev manages to get himself a wife who will put up with his obsessive-compulsive art making, PLUS give him children, I'm not sure I'm going to believe. We'll see about that.
“Become a great artist. That is the only way to justify what you are doing to everyone's life.'... I did not understand what he meant. I did not feel I had to justify anything... I did not want to paint in order to justify anything, I wanted to paint because I wanted to paint. I wanted to paint the same way my father wanted to travel and work for the Rebbe. My father worked for Torah. I worked for - what? How could I explain it? For beauty? No. Many of the pictures I painted were not beautiful. For what, then? For a truth I did not know how to put into words. For truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
A Home in Bloom: Four Enchanted Seasons with Flowers
by Christie Purifoy
My grandson Julian helped me make Dandelion Cupcakes from Christie Purifoy’s gorgeous book, the first week of Eastertide. There are several layers of resurrection happening here, which I alluded to on Mother’s Day. I am still reflecting on the restorative power of picking flowers and putting them in cupcakes. If for no other reason, I highly recommend this book and this recipe because they were so much fun! And as Christie writes, these cupcakes are “edible sunshine!”
“Through enchanting prose and delightful activities, avid writer, gardener and placemaker Christie Purifoy helps readers capture the curious magic of the garden and bring its life and joy into their homes.”
10+ links helping me practice the restful way of Jesus this month
Pause with me to enjoy well-written words to encourage us to worship God, love people, and enjoy beauty wherever we find ourselves.
⏸️ The treasure of democracy that Madeleine L’Engle discovered in America’s national parks: Our protected wild spaces awakened something profound in the author of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ They did the same for me. by Abigail Santamaria for The Boston Globe
⏸️ Christian comics: Encountering God in multipanel visual storytelling with Victoria Emily Jones at Art & Theology
⏸️ Blessings Abound: Exploring the Meaning and Traditions of Rogation Days with
at The Liturgical Home⏸️ Swift at
⏸️ (I thought about these exhibits with remorse and lament as I squished a stinging bee from my laundry pile this week. I am so sorry, little bee.) Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World at the National Gallery of Art
⏸️ Eastertide: Brief Thoughts and Resource Recommendations on Re-Enchantment with
at The Green Door⏸️ Perennial, a poem by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat at the evocatively-named Velveteen Rabbi
⏸️ The Mothering Paradox: And choosing the joy that is ahead with
at⏸️ Not all words are meant for the masses: And success does not make meaning with
at at⏸️ How Spiritual Direction is Different than Counseling with Amy Barker Willers
What restful things are you enjoying lately?
Do you have any recommendations for me?
Tell me about something restful you’ve enjoyed lately, and I’ll curate some resources for you.
A Moment of Rest
I hope just reading the word “rest” will evoke a spacious, welcoming invitation to drop your guard, put your feet up, and stay awhile. And like genuinely restful experiences, you will find yourself refreshed and wanting to offer the gift of your loving presence to others. And you’ll be able to do this in the restful way of Jesus.
Pause, breathe, and rest for a moment with this curation of art, music, and poetry.
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
All intervolv’d and spreading wide,
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
So fleet they scarce are more than one,
Yet changingly the trills repeat
And linger ringing while they fleet,
Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear
To her beyond the handmaid ear,
Who sits beside our inner springs,
Too often dry for this he brings,
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,
As up he wings the spiral stair,
A song of light, and pierces air
With fountain ardor, fountain play,
To reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discern’d
An ecstasy to music turn’d,
Impell’d by what his happy bill
Disperses; drinking, showering still,
Unthinking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renew’d in endless notes of glee,
So thirsty of his voice is he,
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow,
The tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinkled bright
By simple singing of delight,
Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d,
Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,
Perennial, quavering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
That trembling into fulness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Such wooing as the ear receives
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
Of aspens when their chattering net
Is flush’d to white with shivers wet;
And such the water-spirit’s chime
On mountain heights in morning’s prime,
Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him rais’d,
Puts on the light of children prais’d,
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
Though nought be promis’d from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment.
For singing till his heaven fills,
’T is love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:
The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine
He is, the hills, the human line,
The meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dreams of labor in the town;
He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins;
The wedding song of sun and rains
He is, the dance of children, thanks
Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of violets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,
And you shall hear the herb and tree,
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
As you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way,
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink:
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in flood,
We want the key of his wild note
Of truthful in a tuneful throat,
The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere,
Now names, and men still housing here,
Whose lives, by many a battle-dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet:
Whom heavenly singing gives us new,
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From firmest base to farthest leap,
Because their love of Earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve and pass reward,
So touching purest and so heard
In the brain’s reflex of yon bird;
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
—“Lark Ascending” by George Meredith
Thank you so much, Tamara!
Loved the little beasts! Thank you so much for sharing my post, Tamara 🩷