May and June 2012

So Bruce and I have been super busy so far this spring / summer! We went camping three times in May (with our church, with my sister's family to Yosemite, and just us in Big Sur). We had a great time! And just when we thought we would be having a low key Memorial Day my work threw a last minute request at me to go to London (!!!). They even offered to fly Bruce out and pay for his expenses, too. Clearly this was an offer we couldn't refuse, so we went early and enjoyed 3 days in Paris before spending 4 days in London.

So I guess my attempt to quit my job wasn't really very effective, was it? :) It's been nice to have more time to myself and I don't mind transitioning slowly out of working. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I keep working through the end of the year or even longer. We'll see!

This week I hosted a baby shower & Bruce just finished a major deadline at work (hooray!). Next week we're off to a girls / youth camp for our church (I'll be gone all week, Bruce will come for 2 days). After that I think I may be done camping for awhile...

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

I'm in the midst of reading this book and I want to mark several passages so that I can remember them. Hopefully some of you will like them as much as I do.


The following passages highlight Frankl's conclusions on finding meaning in life:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. (page 75)

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only his creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. (page 76)

I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance. (page 77) 

Details of a particular man's inner greatness may ... come to [your] mind*, like the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it: but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.'" 

 *One that comes to my mind is my dear friend Kate who faced long months of pain with dignity and faith until her eventual death.