Proverbs 365 - October Review

November 4th, 2010

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Another month has recently passed, so I'm due for another review of my Proverbs 365 project. Ever since the first day of 2010, I've been taking a Proverb for each day of the year and then trying to consider it and apply it for 21st Century living. Sometimes the daily entries take the form of an essay or a more traditional devotional meditation; other times, the entries have been more in the form of short stories and allegories. Each day it's something different!

Looking back over the month of October, I'm honestly wondering if it may have been one of the best months yet for the Proverbs 365 project.  Certainly one of the most creative.  If I do say so myself, the posts have a very visceral sense of scene and connection to the fall season.  There's a strong emphasis on story (and less of an emphasis on essay).  Many of the visuals that accompanied the posts really added something beautiful.  And in any event, I feel like October represented some of my most honest, most emotionally-grounded writing.  Because of all this, I had a hard time narrowing it down to my top three favorites from the past month (as I try to do each month), but here is what I came up with for the month of October:

For starters, I enjoyed something of a stroll down memory lane, when I read Proverbs  chapter 13,  and applied it to my reminiscence of the fall of 1993, when my wife and I first fell in love.  In particular, I connected our personal experiences from that fall with verse 12 which says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life..." But then I went on from there to extend the reflection to the first year of our marriage, five years later, in which we also had to learn the tough truths of Proverbs 13:19, which says, "A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but fools detest turning from evil".  To me, these two Proverbs capture and distill the learnings of much of my experience in dating and marriage -- both good and bad.  So I wrote about the experience in P1312 - Hopes and Longings.

A bit later in the month, I came up against what I suppose is a pretty much inevitable question, during the course of a one-year daily writing project -- but even so, I was struck suddenly last month with the question of "How much am I really being impacted by this year's intensive study of the Proverbs?"  I was forced to deeply consider the goals of this writing project, when I was confronted with the message of Proverbs 22:17-18:  "Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips." As I considered that Proverb, I made the painful realization that a lot of times it "feels like I'm just completing a homework assignment... just doing the minimum to find a Proverb that I haven't used yet, try to squeeze out 500-750 words, and then get on with my life."  In response to these thoughts, I wrote P2217 - Reality Check.  And that's really what that particular meditation did for me.  It gave me a reality check and a fresh level of commitment to genuine heart application -- which has, I think, resulted in much richer reflections on the Proverbs.

Thirdly, I thought I might feature one of the short stories that came out of this month's study of the Proverbs.  Sometimes writers talk about a story taking on a life of its own -- with the characters revealing themselves through the course of a piece and making decisions and taking actions that "surprise" the author himself.  And honestly, the thought always seemed a bit hokey to me.  But I think I actually experienced a small dose of this phenomenon when I wrote the story P2909 - A Scottie, a Volvo, a Plaintiff, and a Fool.  The story was based on Proverbs 29:9 -- where it reads, "If a wise man goes to court with a fool, the fool rages and scoffs, and there is no peace." As you'll see from the story, this is exactly what happens to a man who had the misfortune of accidentally running over his neighbor's dog.  Right now the story is a little bit rough and raw, but someday I hope to revisit these characters and this storyline, to see if I might be able to expand it a bit further.  In the meantime, though, I hope you can enjoy it as is.

Finally, for a complete listing of October's content, here are the titles of all 31 entries, along with direct links to the rest of the content:

November, of course, has already started -- and the Proverbs 365 project keeps moving along with it. Please visit http://proverbs365.ericasp.com to keep up on all the latest. Also, please feel free to spread the word, too... One of the distinct advantages of the Proverbs is that it's easy to tune into them, whenever one might so choose. It's not like if you missed the first ten months, then you're "behind" or anything like that. The Proverbs are just like these little power pellets that can be consumed and digested immediately. It's never too late to start enjoying them!

Also, for what it's worth, some of you may have noted that I made the unfortunate decision to disable the comments section on Proverbs365.  For some reason, it had become more susceptible to spam comments than my regular blog -- dozens, and sometimes even hundreds, of fake comments every day. And since it was a smaller number of comments on that section of the website anyway, I shut it down.  From here on out, I guess you could provide your comments (if any) via these monthly reviews.

This entry is filed under God, The Bible, Reading the Bible, Proverbs 365.