Heather Holleman's Blog, page 223

Loving German Kühne Barrel Pickles

Every once in a while, I remember to pick up some barrel pickles if I see them at a grocery story that imports delicious pickles. I love German pickles, especially the Kühne brand.

I love having little things to love–like pickles. My daughter and I eat a few from the squatty jar, and I tell her how much I love pickles. It’s fun to think of all the personality quirks and ways someone might characterize you as if you were a character in a novel. I would arrive on the scene as a pickle-loving woman obsessed with vivid verbs and semicolons.

It’s strange, but at least you know me.

My Favorite Assignment: A Wondering Essay

For the final assignment for my advanced writers at Penn State–after moving through signature stories, controversy and persuasion, opinion pieces, and professional materials for job applications, students attempt the classic humanities essay of writing to sift or understand what they think about some curious thing.

It’s a wondering essay.

It’s an essay rooted in fascination and marveling at something or someone till we arrive at new understanding or an epiphany. We read to see your mind at work. It’s a very old-fashioned kind of essay, one we once mastered in centuries past, now taken over by argument and debate.

Students begin by writing down what creates that sense of wonder in them. What fascinates them? What do they want to keep learning about?

We talk about the neuroscience of curiosity and wonder and just how much the brain loves this kind of thinking. We talk about asking the kinds of questions that lead to wonder: Why this? How can this be? Why do we care about this? What if? What now? 

We talk about strange and beautiful things: the mimic octopus, how squirrels know to bury acorns, why we love sunsets and the Northern Lights and whether they are intrinsically beautiful or if they would cease to fascinate us if we experienced them every day. We talk about if the Grand Canyon is always grand or if living near it would make it ordinary. We consider the supernatural, celebrity obsession, romantic gestures, and conspiracy theories.

We talk about sound waves, gravity, and prophecy. We talk about the construct of time and how we experience it. We talk about how some people experience numbers and sounds as colors.

And we wonder. We marvel. We stay fascinated.

Fallen and Beautiful

I love the day before the leaf blowers come, before the families with their rakes assemble, and before the autumn wind swirls and winter snow falls.

On this day, the tree drops her leaves, and we see how beautiful they remain, even fallen.

In high places or low places, we still reflect beauty. And sometimes, in that lowest place, we astonish.

Make Yourself a Teacher

I show my students the research regarding the importance of teaching information in order to retain that knowledge. In fact, if you study with the mindset that you’ll teach the data later–to a friend or a parent for example–your brain employs a powerful strategy to remember the facts. It remembers key points. It synthesizes data. It forms a presentation.

Learning to teach, not for testing, works better.

We teach what we most need to learn. We thrive as learners when we anticipate teaching. I believe this research (found in the journal of Memory & Cognition) helps me understand my own joy in reading scripture. I retain it best when I imagine who needs the encouragement I’ve read. I scan the whole day, in fact, for learning with an eye to teach it later in my blog.

Oh, the wonder of teaching in order to learn best!

Unexpected Snow

Today, fluffy white globs fell upon our neighborhood. Snow! We haven’t even raked our yard from falling autumn leaves, and the snow dared to come unannounced. It’s beautiful and astonishing, and I realize how much unexpected things for which I’m not prepared often usher in beauty and the kind of pause I need for worship.

It’s a day for hot chocolate and a few Christmas carols. It’s a day to gaze out the window, turn the heat on, and bundle up with cozy socks, slippers, and blankets.

It’s an unexpected joy.

After the Evaluation

I love the moment when a student wants to improve an essay after the grade comes in—not for a higher grade or for any other reason than the satisfaction of working on a piece of writing they love.

Twice it happens like this:  a student comes in to talk about changing this or that, improving this paragraph, and adding in this thought even though it doesn’t change the grade. And again, a student comes to the office to work on something while explaining all the negative feedback she received.

“Doesn’t the grade shut you down? Does the negative feedback make you insecure and discouraged at all?” I ask.

“No! Why would it? It’s just information about what to do next to make things better.”

I sit with students, amazed at how much more mature they seem than I was at their same age, back when achievement and high grades meant everything. I sit with a writer who lets no grade disorient or destabilize her (either good or bad). It’s because she loves what she wrote and want to make it even better. The grade just indicates, for these writers, places of possible improvement, more creativity, and new directions.

The grade shuts nothing down; it opens everything up.

 

Write While the Pasta Cooks

Today I had a great conversation with a younger writer who wants to finish a manuscript while also maintaining a full-time job and raising a family with young children. We laugh about writing in the nooks and crannies of the day like while the pasta cooks on the stove. I think about writing in between laundry loads, while the coffee brews, while the dishes dry, while waiting in line at the grocery store and typing thoughts into the notes of my phone, while sitting in dentist office waiting rooms, airports, before classes begin, in the car pool line, and even while lying in the bed in the morning.

It’s true that sometimes the writing happens in the middle of everything else.

Above Every Delay

I receive an alert that thunderstorms will most likely delay my trip home tomorrow. I apply the family motto that “every delay is God’s way” so I can begin to turn my dread to joy. Who wants another hotel, another long wait at the airport, and the fuss? Will I cancel class on Monday? What about my family? What am I supposed to do?

Every delay is God’s way!

But pray the weather turns! As I research why a thunderstorm so disrupts planes, I realize the vital way planes endure: they cannot fly through the storm; they must fly above it.

I think higher. I lift my eyes higher. God holds our times and our delays in His hands, and nothing falls outside His loving control.

Beginning with Joy

I’m traveling and speaking again this weekend, and this morning, I learned to ask this question: What truly brings me joy? How can I do that thing here? 

As I walk with God today, I realize how much bringing others joy brings me joy. I think about all the things I could do in this one day, and that singular activity provides so much joy in the Lord.

The second thing I learn this morning is how natural joy is for children. They wake up and automatically seem to know the thing that makes their hearts sing. On a day off, for example, I watch my older girls naturally and without apology move into joy: they knit; they practice their new obsession called “tiny baking” (imagine miniature cakes fit for dolls); they watch Hallmark movies; they laugh and dream already about Christmas; they listen to music they love. I know these things because they text me pictures of tiny baking and alert me about all I’m missing on the Hallmark channel.

I think adults often forget to ask the question, What truly brings me joy today in this place God put me, in this personality He gave me? 

 

God is a Good Teacher

It’s so true what God says in Psalm 32:8:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

How do I know? Because after all this time, I’ve truly learned how to do the things God has called me to do. But at first, I had so much to learn. I’m so thankful I didn’t give up or give way to fear or embarrassment because I was new to the task.

I had to say, “Teach me, Lord. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know you led me here.”

He teaches. Everywhere I go, He teaches.

For example, as I’m nearly finished with my speaking events for 2017 (just four left!), I’ve learned some things:

I’ve learned to enjoy airports, rental cars, and toll roads. I’ve learned how to sleep in hotels. I’ve learned how to speak to audiences large and small. I’ve learned how to be myself. I’ve learned to fight dread. I’ve learned how to pack a small, organized suitcase. I’ve learned how to speak on the radio. I’ve learned to how listen to people, really listen to them. I’ve learned how to use God’s word in the moment. I’ve learned how to trust the people running my presentations or advancing my slides when I speak. I’ve learned how to dress for public events. I’ve learned even how to wear makeup well. I’ve learned not to be afraid but to look for signs that God is treating me as His treasured possession. I’ve learned how to make meals in advance for my family, how to prepare everyone when Mom leaves, how to check in to make sure everyone is still OK with this writing and speaking thing, and how to celebrate the return home well. I’ve learned to gather stories wherever I go. I’ve learned to rejoice and surrender, even when I want to run away. I’ve learned to make new friends and belong to new people much different from me. I’ve learned to desperately depend on God’s word and the presence of Jesus. 

And I’m still learning. I’m still learning that, wherever I go, He is a good, good Teacher.