Make a list How a simple practice can change our lives and open our hearts

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, 1949-

Book - 2018

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.

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Subjects
Published
Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, 1949- (author)
Physical Description
xii, 190 pages ; 18 cm
ISBN
9780802875747
  • 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 give's 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
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

There's more to list-making than that "honey-do" hanging from the fridge magnet, suggests McEntyre (What's in a Phrase?) in this small volume, which goes well beyond the to-do list to invite new and creative ways of thinking and doing. In brief chapters organized within three general categories-whys, ways, and examples of list-making-McEntyre peppers her discussion with suggestions of lists to try. "Changes I Find Threatening," "Why They Might Be Angry," and "Fun I Never Thought I'd Have" are three highlights that will not have occurred to many readers before. McEntyre shows how a list's title can shape one's approach to challenges both internal and external. She passionately declares that relationships, intellectual curiosity, and the search for meaning can be reinvigorated by articulating individual items. Acknowledging the difficult work that goes into changing one's life, McEntyre believes listing can be a useful, creative act to spur change. Readers of all kinds, from type A veteran list-makers to those whose blood pressure rises at the thought of making a list, will find much useful information here. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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