one of the things she talks about at the start of this bead is how after she moved out of David's apartment she moved into her own apartment and lived by herself for the first time in her life. she says that it was so important to her to live in a "one bedroom." I found this interesting because she talks about how she saw her apartment as a "..sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery"(22). I haven't gone through a painful divorce, or in been in any relationship at all let alone a serious one, never even been on a date, but I can relate a little to how she viewed her apartment. because I went potluck at U.P, I did not have a housemate for the first year that I lived there(the one I got this year has moved out, so am by myself until they find me a new one) I had the place to myself though I did not have access to the second room. but I loved having the place to myself because I got to decorate it,it became my place, where I knew no one else was going to be there, I didnt have to worry about other people being around,etc.sure sometimes it gets sad coming home to an empty place but there's something very...freeing about it too. in china, am going to have my own one bedroom apartment, and am looking forward to that. sure, its scary because of the stories I hear about rats and is CHINA!! am going to be living by myself in a country that's on the other side of the world! lol so I can relate to how she viewed her apartment: a place to heal, to be yourself, where you're free to just feel what your feeling and not have to sensor it because of others.
something else I can relate to is when she talks about how she and David kept breaking up then coming back together. she writes "because how could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after?it had to work didn't it?"(22). I want to be in a romantic relationship with the right guy, to know that he loves me and that I love him, and we are good for each other. am also a hopeless romantic, so for me, love is all you need. since most of my love is unrequited love, in my mind if the two people love each other, all's good. perfect sailing. but maybe that's not always true. maybe you do need more than love. maybe just because two people love each other, really and truly, doesnt mean they'll end up together, that it'll work. maybe there are other things that have to be there as well. Brent tells me all the time to focus on what I have being single, what that frees me to do that married people/people in relationshisps arent free to do, and I never really can. to me what they have is so much more...valuable. at least to me. in my mind, if the guy loves you back, all's good. maybe i have an unrealistic perception that I need to work on.
"i was actually feeling kind of delighted about all the compartments of time and space that werw appearing in my days,during which I could ask myself the radical new question:'what do you want to do,Liz?'"(23). I liked this because like I stated earlier, am told all the time that being single frees me to travel, to think about what I want to do and not have to factor in someone else,etc. and i always say that's not worth it to me. yet, this statement makes me think about that. i've never been on a date or in a relationship, so am used to just being able to go where i want(money issues aside, parents aside,etc). i can think about what i want, why i want it, if i can do it,etc. and i never have to factor in someone else. the idea of not being able to do something because of a guy in my life, is...alien to me. its SO hard for me to picture. all these "freedoms"that single life has that people tell me about, that I know it brings, I do have them. and while i may say that they are not worth it to me, sometimes you don't know what in your life you need until its not there. liking moving to a foreign country: you might not even think about how much you want a detached house because detached houses are the standard in america. in places like England and the Continent, they are not standard so until you get there you don;t realize that you do want a detached house. so maybe right now, freedoms of single life are the standard for me, so i dont even notice them. yet maybe if I were all of a sudden in a relationship, i would notice those freedoms and how i do actually like them and need to have them for awhile. if i were in a relationship right now, I would be seriously worrying about how my going to China to teach for a year is going to affect my relationshipa and that would be a MAJOR factor in whether I would even go or not. I would be having to think that i want to come back to live in Abilene for a few years, at least for graduate school and a litlle longer but my boyfriend is planning to move to the metroplex,etc. putting it in that perspective, it makes me see that maybe...maybe I like my single freedoms more than I realize. not that I WANT to stay single forever, and not that I now don't want to date or meet a guy or have a boyfriend, etc but it does...put things into perspective and makes me think about...starting to be glad that am single and realizing that maybe...(this is VERY hard and scary for me to write)...maybe...maybe at this point in my life, I need/want to be single, to not have to factor in someone else in my life choices. i want to live in a city that i want to live in, that i choose to live in because it feels right to me, i want to choose a graduate school(if any accept me which I doubt)that is right for me,etc. i want to go to China for a year and teach english, then come back and do my master's, live in Abilene so either go to hardin simmons for my master's in Reading Education or do the Southern New Hampshire University Master's in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and maybe go back to China once I have my master's(and qualify for higher salary)or get a job teaching english at a community college,etc. and those plans mean a lot to me, and they feel right to me, and I think God approves of them(i write that very hesingtantly because I don't know the mind/Will of God) so maybe having a relationship right now would just...idk. not be...idk. but maybe you get what I'm saying. and that quote made me think about all of this because she talks about thinking about what she wants is a radical idea for her, and to me it isnt.
I also like that she writes "But why must everything always gave a practical application?"(23). i like that and i think its a something our society needs to learn. graduate programs ask you why you want that degree, what you want to do with it,etc and sometimes I wonder why the people who want a master's for the heck of it, because its somethign they want, who want to do something but dont have a specific "reasonable" reason for it,etc, get treated like they're wrong, like they're not serious. this quote is when she was talking about how she was learning Italian and she was saying to herself there wasn't a good practical reason for it.
in the 7th bead, she talks about how she got an Indian Guru. this is a short bead, actually all of these are pretty short chapters, not long at all which I like. each bead does feel like a story, a small snaphot of something and the true story is how they all fit into the greater story, each is a tiny part of the greater whole. something that she wrote that I loved was she whe she said that she wanted a spiritual teacher she wrote: "I literly mean that it was my heart who said this,speaking through my mouth"(25). this happens to me a lot, I feel a strong desire for something, a strong love of something, and i dont have the words for it or the reason for it. maybe its the things that we feel but don't have a reason for that are the most...true.i also like the ancient Sankskirt mantra that her Guru gave all her students that she would mediate every morning that means "I honor the divinity that resides within me"(25). I love it because that's what we as Jesus followers should be doing.
the 8th bead was about she got this assighment (she was a journalist)in Indonesia and she ended up talking to this 9th generation mediciene man. they could bring one question or proble to him and he would try to help them. she said :" i want to have a lasting experience of God...sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world,but then i lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears.i want to be with God all the time. but i don;t want to be a monk,or totally give up worldly pleasures. i guess what i want is to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights,but also devote myself to God"(27). simply put, I love this because I want the exact same thing. I want to...feel God. experience Him . yet I also don't want to shut myself off to the world or from people to do it. the medicine man told her that she would come back to Bali.
in the 9th bead is where she gets the idea that we know is coming, the idea to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia. at first she couldn't decide which one to go. she wanted to go to Italy so she could practive her italian in context and because "...i was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure abd beauty are revered"(29). i have been having the same feeling a bit lately, its actually one of my new year's resolusions, to experience something beautiful. i also have this desire to go to the Grand Canyon, and i will!! anyway, she also wanted to go to her Guru's Ashram in India, and go to Indonesia again. all three countries were so different and her reasons for each of them were opposites almost: pleasure in italy and devotion in India. so wrote: "what if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could syncrhonize seemingly incongrous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?"(29). i love this because the idea appeaks to me: what if we did not limit ourselves, what if we simply expanded our lives, our hearts, our minds, so we can experience it all?love everything and everyone? interesting thought. at least, I think so. it reminds me of my England and China thing. I have this STRONG love of England, I love it, am in love with it and I want to live there, i love the country, the people, its history, its culture...i fell in love with it. its in my heart. England is what I want, where I want to go, what i love...China is where GOD is sending me and where GOD is putting this strong passionate love and dedication and desire in me for this country, and obviously what God wants is more important, but He didn;t just take away my love of England. its still there, He's just adding a love of China there. it makes me look forward to loving China just as much as i do England, and whateve else God puts in my heart for me to love. i want to love the whole world like this. not an exact paralle, but a slight similarity. lol.
the 9th bead is where she decides to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, art of devotion in India, and art of balancing the two in Indonesia. she says her friends were mysterified and often mocked her for it.she talks about how she was not free to leave because of her divorce, since her soon to be ex husband was still being difficult.
she said that she and David had broken up again. she wrote something that I can definely relate to, on a smaller scale: "often I was still overcome with a desire to sacrifice everything for the love of him. other times, i had the quite opposite instict-to put as many continents and oceans as possible between me and this guy, in the hope of finding peace and happiness"(31). i can relate to it because there is a part of me that believes it would give up all the freedom of being single, or my going to China, or my graduate school or staying in Abilene for awhile, for a guy, yet there is another part of me, strong and bigger actually but that am...scared of so I hide it, that is NOT willing to give those things up right now. not that it wants to be single forever, but those things mean a lot to me and am going to do them and it knows a relationship would make those things...impossible and/or hard to do. i can also relate to it because I currently feel this way about Brent. sometimes am sad that aftwr graduation its doubtful i'll see him again, that we wont be the same kind of friends we are now, that our friendship will dim,etc. other times, I cannot wait to get on that plane to China and put an entire PLANET between us. lol.
at the end of this bead her ex-husband signs the divorce papes and she's free to do on her trip. there is a cool story of when she finds out, but this is long enough already.lol.
the 10th bead is really short, two paragraphs or so. she talks about she was in Italy a few weeks later. she quit her job, put her things in storage, paid off her bills and her divorce setttlement, and she was off.
the 11th bead was also short, though a bit longer than the 10th bead. in the 11th bead she describes the first meal she ate in Italy, and how when she got into bed that night and turned off the light,she waited to start crying, to get depressed, because that's what usually happened to her with the lights off but she didn't. she felt okay and fine:"early symptons of contentment"(36).
I love this book! the main thing I got from these beads was how pleasure/beauty and devotion to God do not have to cancel each other out. maybe you can find a balance of both. often times we feel like we have to choose pleasure in Italy or devotion in India, but maybe we can have both in our lives, with balance.
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