Recipes for a Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles by Rivvy Neshama (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📗

“be of good cheer” advice, suggested by my English friend Helen. If you have a partner or child, she says, wake them or greet them with a glad heart (especially if you live in England, where the skies are often gray). And sure enough, John, my English husband, always smiles at me each morning, looks out at our Colorado sky, and, if just a speck of blue is present, says, “It’s a beautiful day.”

That’s right, even if I’m growling, that’s what he says.

WORDS TO LIVE BY

I’m not sure who gave me this recipe or when I started using it, but I find it helpful to post words of guidance or inspiration around the house—on mirrors and walls or by my computer. Some of them I cut out from magazines, others are from cards or posters, and a few are quotations I copied from books. I don’t always notice them, but when I do, they wake me up and give my spirit a lift.

A NEW YEAR’S GREETING

Every new year—Chinese New Year, that is—we get a hand-printed greeting card from our acupuncturist, David Scrimgeour. Each has a picture of the animal that year represents in Chinese tradition (say, the Year of the Horse), along with some words of wisdom passed on by David.

I’m always surprised by the animals that the Chinese chose to honor. Given their twelve-year cycle for naming the years, they could have picked all elegant or powerful ones: the Lion, the Horse, the Swan. But instead they included the Rat, the Monkey, the Rooster. There’s something very inclusive about that. It reminds me that all beings, no matter how lowly they seem, have their own unique virtues and redeeming qualities. Go, Rat!

Anyway, one card David sent us said:

Trust in the Universe and Move Forward in Your Life.

I think it came in the Year of the Pig, but I taped it on my desk since its wisdom holds forever.

ONE DAY AT A TIME

I’ve always liked the Serenity Prayer, often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things

I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

My daughter, Elise, sent it to me once on a greeting card, and I hung it on my office wall. It felt ennobling, though a bit daunting. I mean, it’s not easy to accept what we cannot change, right?

Later, I found out that the prayer is an integral part of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, and some meetings end with all members reciting it. Later still, I was at an art show where my friend Kristine Smock had created wrought-iron sculptures of this prayer, the words themselves surrounded by animals of the land, sea, and air.

That’s when I found out that the Serenity Prayer has a tagline: Living one day at a time. Kristine had made a sculpture of this phrase too, and that’s the one we bought to hang in our home. Almost anything seems possible to change or accept when I take life “one day at a time.”

DESIDERATA

Back in the sixties, nearly every psychedelic shop had a copy of “Desiderata” for sale, among the neon posters and hashish pipes. It’s a prose poem of prayerful advice, often printed on imitation parchment paper, along with these words at the bottom: “Found in Old St. Paul’s Church. Dated 1692.”

I bought a copy, framed it, and hung it in my home. Its guidance felt so relevant and so in tune with my flower-child sentiments that every time I read it I’d say “Wow!” It seemed way cool and mystical that someone wrote this in the seventeenth century.

It also seemed suspect. I could easily picture some fellow hippie writing this and then deciding it would sell better if people thought it was ancient wisdom found in some church. Which is probably true, but doesn’t seem fair. If words are wise, why should it matter who said them or when? But I guess it does, since I liked to believe it was written eons ago and found in Old St. Paul’s.

So I held on to that belief until 2001. That’s when I received about ten copies of an email that was said to be “what the Dalai Lama has to say on the millennium” and gave a list of nineteen instructions for life. Now I had heard the Dalai Lama is a fan of email, but I somehow didn’t see him writing this list—especially when the last item was “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon!” This made me question again the source of “Desiderata.” So I did some research and here’s what I found:

“Desiderata,” which is Latin for “things to be desired,” was written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s. Max was a poet and attorney from Terre Haute, Indiana. Apparently, a rector of St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore, Maryland, found the poem in 1959, printed it up for his congregants, and noted on the top “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692,” since his church was founded in 1692. This led to the later confusion.

Okay, “Written by a Hoosier Lawyer. Dated 1927” doesn’t quite have the charm of “Found in Old St. Paul’s Church. Dated 1692.” Nonetheless, I continue to love and be inspired by “Desiderata.” It still hangs in our home, and whenever I read it, one line will stand out as the perfect message I need at that time.

For those of you who missed the sixties, here it is:

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well