Sally Lloyd-Jones's Blog, page 2

Spin Wisdom

Is it just me? Or are spin instructors saying these profound things? Lately, as I pant and sweat and spin my way along at top speed going nowhere, I’ve been noticing there’s all this motivating cycle inspiration. (Wait! I feel a book title coming on: “Spin-Spiration”!)

Sorry.

But seriously.

My favorite:

If you’re comfortable, you’re doing it wrong.

Oh dear.

How about this one?

The last 20 seconds are the most important: when you want to stop because you can’t go on—keep going because that’s when you get stronger.

Oh no.

Or this:

If you’re shaking, it doesn’t mean you’re weak; it means you’re doing good work

Horrid.

Here are some others I’ve collected:

Whatever you did before, do it better next
After all you’ve done, this is nothing
Only a specific goal gets you specific results
The hardest part was showing up
Put your heart into it—half-hearted makes no one happy
You’re competing against yourself

Relax, focus, breathe

Climb like a professional

This is why you came here

Don't back down

What other Spin-Spirations have you heard?

SLJ

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Published on February 15, 2013 12:03

The Good Doctor

People often ask me, “Are you related to THE Lloyd-Jones?”

To which, of course, I respond ... “But I AM the Lloyd-Jones.”

Of course, what they're really asking is: “Are you related to THE Doctor David Martyn Lloyd-Jones?”

Dr David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) is the rock star of theologians, writers, thinkers (seen here wondrously on a horse). And I'm a total groupie.

[image error] I wish I could say I’d met him. Or heard him preach. Or had him as my great Uncle.

Sometimes I even wish (inappropriately) I could tell lies: "Ah yes! He used to dandle me on his knee of an evening. How well I remember him singing Welsh hymns to me! Oh yes—and the time he took me riding on his horse!"

Anything to not have to say the one thing I actually end up saying which is: "No.”

Which for some reason I always follow with "sorry." I feel it is such a let down. I'm rather let down by the whole thing myself.

The only connection is that half of me is from that same passionate Celtic corner of the world (Wales). But it doesn't quite do, since I've never lived there and only know maybe three words (“Hello”, “Goodnight,” and “Darling”—handily perhaps the most essential ones, but nevertheless.)

But I'm pleased when people ask me if I’m related—because it means I've found another fan of DML-J's teaching and sermons and books—and (if they're not too disappointed) probably a new friend, too.

If you haven't heard of him, then I'm happy to introduce you... Meet THE Doctor David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

[image error] In fact, I snuck him into my new book "Thoughts To Make Your Heart Sing". One of the things I loved best about writing this book was that I got to share some of my MOST favorite writers and thinkers.

Here's one entry (inspired by the good Doctor’s great book, "Spiritual Depression".

[image error]

[You can find the digital poster HERE - & ways to share it with others!]

SLJ.

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Published on February 05, 2013 11:27

The Crystal Cathedral

If you'd told me a couple of years ago, I'd be appearing in a big cathedral with a full orchestra and choir and with a former Miss World—I’d have laughed. Don't be silly.

I never would have beleived you.

But then again, if you'd told me I'd be "Playing the Ryman" I wouldn't have beleived that either.

I'm learning what I expect or think or imagine is beside the point - and usually way too small.

[image error]

So anyway, there I was, that Sunday morning last December, driving to The Crystal Catherdral to be interviewed by Bobby Schuller about my new book "Thoughts To Make Your Heart Sing" - in two services that are broadcast to millions.

I was driving along when suddenly I had to pull over. There, smiling out at me from the side of the road was a face in lights - a face I knew - me smiling back at me. Obviously I had to stop and take a photo.

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Next I parked in the campus. Took some more photos. And then I met the friendliest, most generous people, who welcomed me and fed me and prayed for me. I had make up and hair done, trotted up some steps in between some pastors and out into the cathedral - and the service.

It was wild. It was nothing I ever expected. And it was a total blast. I can't wait to go back!

Here is the video of it. (Miss World comes after me.)

SLJ.

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Published on February 05, 2013 11:00

Picture Books and Accounting

One December, I found myself looking back over the year wondering, unhelpfully, in a businessy tax-ish counting sort of way: "Now let's see, what exactly did I do this year?" (I should have known by that "exactly" where this would go).

So I began counting up the number of picture book manuscripts I'd done that year—in a kind of awful picture book accounting.

It wasn't long before I realized there were none. I'd written no picture book manuscripts. I hadn't got a single picture book contract that year and no picture book published.

I had done nothing.

How could this have happened? I'd been working so hard. What had I been doing all that time?

The trouble was I was looking at picture books like an accountant—as if they were products you manufacture. But picture books aren't products you manufacture; they are seeds that you sow.

[image error] [photo by sally lloyd-jones]

A picture book can begin like a poem (I think all great picture books, actually, are poems) and Robert Frost said it best:

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

You can't force a picture book—any more than you can a seed.

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[photo by sally lloyd-jones]

They need time to take root. To grow. You have to wait for them. You can't make them come by force of will power. They come when they are ready. Like plants. You have to work hard: get down on your hands and knees in the dirt. You must till the soil, water and weed. One year, none will come up. The next, they may all come up at once.

So when you can't see anything and think you've got nothing to show--it's probably not that nothing is happening. It's probably just that what's happening is quiet, and hidden and secret.

[image error] [photo by steppingstonetransitions.com]

It has a lot to do with trust. And a lot to do with waiting. And a lot to do with being on your knees.

And almost nothing to do with accounting.

SLJ.

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Published on January 29, 2013 06:45

Beauty For Everyone

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When you walk through Central Park you feel like you've have escaped out of the city into the countryside—you are surrounded by natural beauty.

Except that it's not.

Natural, I mean.

The space where Central Park was built was originally a “pestilential, rocky swamp.”

The natural beauty of Central Park is completely designed—to seem as if it wasn't.

When the park was built, back in the 1850s, only wealthy New Yorkers could afford to go the Adirondaks. The designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, wanted to give those who couldn’t afford to go, the experience of being in the Adirondacks, the same experience of beauty.

Central Park is a park designed for everyone. [image error]

Joshua Cohen wrote of two examples of the designer’s obsessive attention to detail.

First, the park is 2 ½ miles long. The Central Park Commission said that there had to be four cross-streets connecting the east and west sides of Manhattan. To do that and still feel as if you’re in the Adirondacks, Olmsted and Vaux put the cross-streets eight feet below—an innovation in park design.

“Second,… in … the Bethesda Terrace there’s a fantastic ceiling made with more than 15000 tiles. They’re encaustic tiles which means that the color and geometric design on the surface goes all they way through: it is not a glaze but multi-coloured clay. The ceiling was designed by British architect, Jacob Wrey Mould, based on his two-year-long study of the Alhambra. So this public park in New York City includes a structure with a ceiling based on one of the most beautiful works of architecture in the world."

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Beauty for everyone.

I’m so grateful that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux believed everything matters, that they went for excellence—down to the tiniest, most obsessive detail. And, as a result, gave us Central Park. [image error]

Excellence, it turns out, is not elitist. Excellence is the most inclusive thing. It is beauty and beauty reaches everyone. It's a bit like books that way. At least picture books. The best ones are completely designed to seem as if they aren't.

Truly great design is almost invisible, I think. It's there not to draw attention to itself—it’s there to not get in the way of the story, the experience, the beauty.

Great art is a generosity. Because it's not about the creator or the designer—it's about the person looking at the painting, the reader opening the book, the New Yorker walking across the park.

SLJ.

PS: One last fact about Central Park you may not know. I didn't. It took more gunpowder to build Central Park than was used by both sides in the battle of Gettysburg.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Published on January 15, 2013 13:14

Six Golden Tips for Tea

With the start of the new year, we are all turning over new leaves. But are you turning over a new tea leaf?

Is your tea flavorless? Insipid? Bitter? Ordinary? Or worse… Cheesy?

Here, just in time, come the six golden tips for making the perfect cup of tea.

Think you know all about everything already? Did you know this golden rule: never, ever EVER store tea near cheese.

Neither did I.

Follow these tea tips and then your year will be off to a good start!

You're welcome.

SLJ.

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Published on January 02, 2013 11:09

Playing The Ryman

The Ryman. Most famous former home of the Grand Ole Opry. The stage musicians long to play on.

Legendary.

Musicians say when they Play the Ryman--(because you don't "play at the Ryman", you "play the Ryman")--no matter how famous they are--they are without fail humbled. Humbled thinking about all legends who have trod the same boards before them. Legends including Elvis, Johnny Cash (who met his wife June Carter for the first time back stage at the Ryman), Patsy Cline. They all played the Ryman.

Emmy Lou Harris, Neil Young, Mumford and Sons, Coldplay have all played the Ryman.

And now me. Yes, I "Played the Ryman."

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Last December around this time, I found myself sitting on that same legendary stage looking out at the audience--sitting among my wonderfully talented musician friends--and having really no idea how I got there. I'm a children's book writer. This is not part of what we do.

And yet--there I was "Playing the Ryman." (I was not singing you'll be relieved to hear--just reading from my books). I was honored to be part of Andrew Peterson's moving BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD Christmas concert.

And here I am back again for another year. Thanks to Andrew. And I can't wait.

(And I'll still be pinching myself.)

(And sending photos to prove it to you--but mostly to prove it to me.)

SLJ.

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Published on December 14, 2012 12:45

"Song Of The Stars"

And high above a single star set in the highest heavens shone out brighter than all the others and poured down silver onto the little shed... "A Light to light up the whole world". {Song of the Stars}

When Zondervan asked me to write a Christmas picture book, my first thought was Oh no! There are so many Christmas picture books out there already. How can I make one that’s different.

And I wondered— how can I catch the reader by surprise with this magnificent, familiar story?

And suddenly I was a child again in Africa full of excitement and longing and wonder.

Christmas was coming. There was no snow on the rooftops. The evenings weren’t closing in. But Christmas was coming.

We were little pale blond English girls in darkest Africa and from the beginnings of our lives our childhood was a safari. We were living in a national geographic world of upcountry jungles and savannah’s and wild animals. And our childhood was a paradise.

I was a little pale blond English girl living in a world surrounded by nature and by animals who had no argument with their maker.

Romans 8:19 speaks of “all of Creation longing.” The Psalms tells us that the created order now declares the glory of God (Psalm 19 & 65).

And I began to wonder: when Jesus came, did Creation sense it? It would not be surprising if they did—since they now declare the glory of God, since they long for him. I started imagining the animals and the stars sensing and rejoicing in the coming of Jesus.

When the one who made them came to earth, maybe they knew—though we didn’t.

When the promised gift, the long-awaited one—at last breaks into history—when he at last comes down into his world it is as a glorious surprise.

When Heaven kisses earth. When God becomes man.

Because every Christmas story comes as a gift—and a surprise after longing.

Different that we expected. More than we hoped. Just what we need.

And full of wonder.

"Song of the Stars" is mine.

My hope is that it will perhaps capture something of that wonder. That we would long for him, the way Creation longs for him. And most of all, that he would find room in our hearts—

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Published on December 10, 2012 12:39

what part is work?

Having just come back from almost two months of traveling all around (some of it working, some of it not so much) it was a bit of a shock to come back and face Sitting-at-a-Desk Work (as opposed to Galavanting-Around Work).

Imagine my joy at finding this quote... but all joking aside, this is seriously true. I believe every word. You must fight for this every day.

"It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications."

Anais Nin

[image error] Illustration is by Jago from our new book THOUGHTS TO MAKE YOUR HEART SING coming in October. It shows Polzeath Beach in Cornwall, near where Jago lives. It just so happens to be one of my most favorite places in all the world. I've been going there on holiday since I was tiny. How cool is that?