August 2005 Newsletter
Online Issue # 10

Good Books

Finding Meaning In The Second Half Of Life
How to Finally, Really Grow Up
by James Hollis, Ph.D.
Gotham Books, 2005
hardcover, $25.00

I was considering featuring two other books on the topic of midlife until I discovered this wonderful new book by James Hollis, Jungian analyst, educator and author. Hollis explores the many ways our lives, and our very selves, are shaped to be too small for the soul’s yearnings at midlife. By uncovering persistent but unconscious patterns that no longer work for us (some never did), there is the possibility for a growing consciousness leading to new choices that offer “spiritual enlargement.” Throughout the book, Hollis unravels fascinating dreams and stories from the lives of his clients, and sometimes from his own life, to demonstrate how our own inner wisdom already knows and can be trusted to guide us, with personal clues, into a more soulful, meaningful way of living the rest of our lives.

The seventh chapter—Career Versus Vocation—is a wonderful resource for anyone grappling with the issue of making a living while longing for meaning. “We may choose careers, but we do not choose vocation. Vocation chooses us.” Here, as elsewhere, Hollis writes honestly about the “considerable personal cost” we might pay to follow the soul’s leading and to “choose what chooses us.”

On the page preceding the Introduction, you’ll find a list of eleven questions that midlife asks each of us. Here are three: Whose life have you been living? Why, even when things are going well, do things feel not quite right? Why does so much seem a disappointment, a betrayal, a bankruptcy of expectations? Hollis returns to these questions in the eleventh and final chapter—The Healing of the Soul—where he writes, “We need questions that ask that we grow up.” Most of us also need a competent guide or guidebook; Finding Meaning In the Second Half Of Life is an excellent choice.

“We dream this way every night. And every day the world is full of clues as to the will of the soul, if we are willing or desperate enough to begin to pay attention. If and when we do begin to take this inner life seriously, our locus of sensibility, our psychic gravity, begins to change. From this internal change, profound changes of the outer world become possibilities.”

-James Hollis

FYI: If you’re interested in the other two books I referred to above, they are The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of WISDOM by Angeles Arrien (2005, Sounds True) and Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine (2005, Viking). They come to me highly recommended, but I haven’t read either of them yet.

What We Ache For
Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
HarperSanFrancisco, 2005
hardcover, $21.95

What We Ache For is the kind of book you want to give yourself: great title, beautiful cover design and nourishment for your deepest longings.

Writers, and those longing to write, will probably love the book best, because it offers an intimate and generous opportunity to discover how someone else is doing writing. Most of the insights, suggestions and ideas could be adapted by readers doing other forms of creative work (this is mentioned repeatedly), but I’m not sure the book will speak to the hearts of others as passionately as it speaks to the hearts of those aching to write.

There is a way in which the book doesn’t quite turn out to be the book described in the opening chapter; it ends up being better. What We Ache For is a more personal, instructive and practical account of how a writing / creative life might be arranged, supported, developed and sustained, even as it evolves. Time and again, it reminded me of the Brenda Ueland classic, If You Want To Write. So, if you do, Oriah Mountain Dreamer offers you a beautifully crafted writer’s companion with chapters devoted to beginnings, endings, seeing, silence, doing the work, being received, the artist’s life and more.

At the end of each chapter you’ll find “questions for contemplation and practical suggestions for doing creative work, followed by writing exercises.” These are thoughtfully selected and definitely worth exploring. The author encourages readers to experiment and pay attention to what happens. “If my insights and suggestions help you...then use them. If they do not, ignore them and try something else.”

The book is full of good mentoring.

“Sometimes you have to give up the idea of the creative work you thought you were going to do in order to let the creative work you ache to do happen.”

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Make Your Creative Dreams Real
by SARK
Fireside, 2005
paperback, $16.00

This is SARK’S twelfth and latest book now out in paperback. It has her characteristic look and feel: vivid colors and quirky sketches with lots of stuff for you to do. You’ll learn about SARK’S journey to make her own dreams real, while she offers guidance and encouragement for your dreams. Although the book is designed as a 12-month program, one chapter for each month, you can use it in whatever way works best for you.

Whether you already know your dream and want help to make it real OR you want to discover your own dream to make real, SARK provides a surplus of playful ideas to move your dream along and keep it alive. Some of the steps / ideas are so small or so silly that you might be tempted to undervalue their potential, but they are doable. And that is the point: accumulation in combination with sustained attention. Especially helpful chapters include Finding and Naming Your Dream - chapter one and Nourishing You and Your Creative Dreams - chapter nine. Beginning in chapter seven, Inspiring Stories and Examples of Creative Dreams and Dreamers, you’ll meet a handful of SARK’S friends responding to her questions about their own experiences making their dreams real.

If you’re already a devoted fan of SARK, you’ll probably like this book too. But if you’ve never taken time to explore and work with any of her books, this might be the one to choose first.

“When we think of living our creative dreams, many of us become afraid. Our main fear is usually that we’ll fail. Of course, the real failure is in not trying, but fear hypnotizes us into forgetting that. Fear’s job is to make sure we don’t try...Then we’ll be SAFE. Safe and small and not dreaming at all. ”

-SARK

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