Tuesday Tidbit: Your need to ponder

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Pondering is a must in writing a memoir.

You need to slow down,

uncover, excavate.

Till the soil and sift through it.

Unearth buried experiences.

Return to key events and relive them.

Rethink them, reevaluate them.

Make sense of them.

And most important: You need to discover what God was doing.

"Pondering is thinking, for sure, 

but it has the connotation of peaceful contemplation, 

rather than anxious conjectures. 

I want to . . . take time to reflect and ruminate over 

the experiences God has allowed me to pass through. . . . 

I don't want to simply react to or vent 

about what has been going on 

in, around, and through me. . . . 

I want to take time to thoroughly digest it all." 

(Lisa O'Brien, "Learning to Ponder)

"Days pass and the years vanish 

and we walk sightless among miracles. 

God, fill our eyes with seeing 

and our minds with knowing; 

let there be moments when Your Presence, 

like lightning, 

illumines the darkness in which we walk. 

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, 

that the bush burns, unconsumed. 

And we, clay touched by God, 

will reach out for holiness 

and exclaim in wonder: 'How filled with awe is this place 

and we did not know it!'" 

(Rabbi Chaim Stern)

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Now, go ponder!