Make a List
How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts
Published on 7. February 2018
130 pages
978-1-4674-4959-5 (ISBN)
Description
What if writing a list could literally change your life?From the ancient book of Numbers to the latest clickbait listicle, list-writing has been a routine feature of human experience. Shopping lists. To-do lists. Guest lists. Bucket lists. Lists are everywhere you look.But what if our lists did more than just remind us to buy milk and take out the trash? What if the practice of list-making could help us discover who we truly are and even point us to our deepest joys, hopes, and desires?In Make a List teacher, writer, and wordsmith Marilyn McEntyre shows readers how the simple act of writing a list can open doors to personal discovery and spiritual growth. Deepening her reflections with abundant writing prompts and real-life examples, McEntyre turns the humble list into a work of art-one that has the power to clear minds, open hearts, and change lives.
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Book
02/2018
William B Eerdmans Publishing Co
€42.27
Shipment within 15-20 days
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction: Living by Lists
- Part I: Why Make a List?: Lists serve a surprising variety of purposes. Here are a few reasons to make them.
- To discover subtle layers of feeling
- To name what you want
- To clarify your concerns
- To decide what to let go of
- To help dispel a few fears
- To claim what gives you joy
- To find out what you still have to learn
- To put new words to old experiences
- To get at the questions behind the questions
- To find out who's inside
- To play with possibilities
- To identify complicating factors
- To map the middle ground
- To explore implications
- To connect the dots
- To get to your learning edge
- To notice what you might have missed
- To experience deep attention
- To enjoy complete permission
- Part II: The Way of the List-Maker: There aren't many "rules" in list-making, but there are reliable ways to make lists useful, beautiful, and fun. Here are a few to try out.
- Things to do to the to-do list: Exploring priorities and intentions
- How to do almost anything: How how-to lists help you learn how
- Playing favorites: Lists that clarify values
- The wonder of word lists: How word lists empower, educate, and amuse
- Allowing lament: How lists open a space for sorrow
- How a list becomes a poem: Lists that work in ways you hadn't planned
- How a list becomes a prayer: When lists lead you to your longings
- A long second look: Lists that teach you how to look again
- Memento mori: Lists that commemorate
- Switching lenses: Lists that reframe
- Better than a punching bag: Lists that open a safe space for anger
- Lists for life review: How lists help focus the backward glance
- Cracking open clichés: Lists that get behind the surfaces
- Wanting what you want: Lists that identify unidentified desires
- Talking points: Lists that illuminate your message
- Thin places and sacred spaces: Lists as guides to path-finding
- Love letters: Lists that count the ways
- Litanies: Lists that help you relax into prayer
- Summary statements: Listing for retrospection
- Part III: Play Lists: Lists are a way of opening up "play space." This section is an invitation to play-to tinker with each other's lists, to use the ones provided here as templates for your own, to move lines around and change the mood and marvel at your own ingenuity. Consider, as you read these lists and the short reflections that follow each of them, where whimsy, need, poetic inclinations, and playful imagination might take you.
- A List-Maker's Master List
- Why read?
- What tennis teaches
- A manifesto for amateurs
- How to defeat bureaucracy
- What's fun after fifty
- What marriage teaches
- Other mothers
- Where the Spirit moves
- Appendix: A Few Final Lists for Your General Enjoyment
- What the beach teaches
- What weddings require
- The benefits of bicycling
- When to call home
- Why children enchant us
- Where to dance
- What you get from a garden
- How to be happy in high school
- What leaders learn
- Listen
- A manifesto for moving day
- What every adult should be able to do
- What teachers can tell you
- What's worth waiting for
- Times to practice trust
