50 Mindful Steps To Self Esteem Order Printed Copy
- Author: Janetti Marotta
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About the Book
"50 Mindful Steps to Self Esteem" by Janetti Marotta is a practical guide that offers mindfulness exercises and strategies to help readers improve their self-esteem. The book emphasizes self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-awareness as key components to building a stronger sense of self-worth. Through the suggested exercises, readers can develop a healthier relationship with themselves and cultivate a more positive self-image.
Gladys Aylward
Gladys Aylward was born in London in 1904 (or a few years earlier). She worked for several years as a parlormaid, and then attended a revival meeting at which the preacher spoke of dedicating one's life to the service of God. Gladys responded to the message, and soon after became convinced that she was called to preach the Gospel in China. At the age of 26, she became a probationer at the China Inland Mission Center in London, but was failed to pass the examinations. She worked at other jobs and saved her money. Then she heard of a 73-year-old missionary, Mrs. Jeannie Lawson, who was looking for a younger woman to carry on her work. Gladys wrote to Mrs. Lawson and was accepted if she could get to China. She did not have enough money for the ship fare, but did have enough for the train fare, and so in October of 1930 she set out from London with her passport, her Bible, her tickets, and two pounds ninepence, to travel to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway, despite the fact that China and the Soviet Union were engaged in an undeclared war. She arrived in Vladivostok and sailed from there to Japan and from Japan to Tientsin, and thence by train, then bus, then mule, to the inland city of Yangchen, in the mountainous province of Shansi, a little south of Peking (Beijing). Most of the residents had seen no Europeans other than Mrs. Lawson and now Miss Aylward. They distrusted them as foreigners, and were not disposed to listen to them.
Yangchen was an overnight stop for mule caravans that carried coal, raw cotton, pots, and iron goods on six-week or three-month journeys. It occurred to the two women that their most effective way of preaching would be to set up an inn. The building in which they lived had once been an inn, and with a bit of repair work could be used as one again. They laid in a supply of food for mules and men, and when next a caravan came past, Gladys dashed out, grabbed the rein of the lead mule, and turned it into their courtyard. It went willingly, knowing by experience that turning into a courtyard meant food and water and rest for the night. The other mules followed, and the muleteers had no choice. They were given good food and warm beds at the standard price, and their mules were well cared for, and there was free entertainment in the evening--the inkeepers told stories about a man named Jesus. After the first few weeks, Gladys did not need to kidnap customers -- they turned in at the inn by preference. Some became Christians, and many of them (both Christians and non-Christians) remembered the stories, and retold them more or less accurately to other muleteers at other stops along the caravan trails. Gladys practiced her Chinese for hours each day, and was becoming fluent and comfortable with it. Then Mrs. Lawson suffered a severe fall, and died a few days later. Gladys Aylward was left to run the mission alone, with the aid of one Chinese Christian, Yang, the cook.
A few weeks after the death of Mrs. Lawson, Miss Aylward met the Mandarin of Yangchen. He arrived in a sedan chair, with an impressive escort, and told her that the government had decreed an end to the practice of footbinding. (Note: Among the upper and middle classes, it had for centuries been the custom that a woman's foot should be wrapped tightly in bandages from infancy, to prevent it from growing. Thus grown women had extremely tiny feet, on which they could walk only with slow, tottering steps, which were thought to be extremely graceful.) The government needed a foot-inspector, a woman (so that she could invade the women's quarters without scandal), with her own feet unbound (so that she could travel), who would patrol the district enforcing the decree. It was soon clear to them both that Gladys was the only possible candidate for the job, and she accepted, realizing that it would give her undreamed-of opportunities to spread the Gospel.
During her second year in Yangchen, Gladys was summoned by the Mandarin. A riot had broken out in the men's prison. She arrived and found that the convicts were rampaging in the prison courtyard, and several of them had been killed. The soldiers were afraid to intervene. The warden of the prison said to Gladys, "Go into the yard and stop the rioting." She said, "How can I do that?" The warden said, "You have been preaching that those who trust in Christ have nothing to fear." She walked into the courtyard and shouted: "Quiet! I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once. Choose one or two spokesmen, and let me talk with them." The men quieted down and chose a spokesman. Gladys talked with him, and then came out and told the warden: "You have these men cooped up in crowded conditions with absolutely nothing to do. No wonder they are so edgy that a small dispute sets off a riot. You must give them work. Also, I am told that you do not supply food for them, so that they have only what their relatives send them. No wonder they fight over food. We will set up looms so that they can weave cloth and earn enough money to buy their own food." This was done. There was no money for sweeping reforms, but a few friends of the warden donated old looms, and a grindstone so that the men could work grinding grain. The people began to call Gladys Aylward "Ai-weh-deh," which means "Virtuous One." It was her name from then on.
Soon after, she saw a woman begging by the road, accompanied by a child covered with sores and obviously suffering severe malnutrition. She satisfied herself that the woman was not the child's mother, but had kidnapped the child and was using it as an aid to her begging. She bought the child for ninepence--a girl about five years old. A year later, "Ninepence" came in with an abandoned boy in tow, saying, "I will eat less, so that he can have something." Thus Ai-weh-deh acquired a second orphan, "Less." And so her family began to grow.... She was a regular and welcome visitor at the palace of the Mandarin, who found her religion ridiculous, but her conversation stimulating. In 1936, she officially became a Chinese citizen. She lived frugally and dressed like the people around her (as did the missionaries who arrived a few years after in in the neighboring town of Tsechow, David and Jean Davis and their young son Murray, of Wales), and this was a major factor in making her preaching effective.
Then the war came. In the spring of 1938, Japanese planes bombed the city of Yangcheng, killing many and causing the survivors to flee into the mountains. Five days later, the Japanese Army occupied Yangcheng, then left, then came again, then left. The Mandarin gathered the survivors and told them to retreat into the mountains for the duration. He also announced that he was impressed by the life of Ai-weh-deh and wished to make her faith his own. There remained the question of the convicts at the jail. The traditional policy favored beheading them all lest they escape. The Mandarin asked Ai-weh-deh for advice, and a plan was made for relatives and friends of the convicts to post a bond guaranteeing their good behavior. Every man was eventually released on bond. As the war continued Gladys often found herself behind Japanese lines, and often passed on information, when she had it, to the armies of China, her adopted country. She met and became friends with "General Ley," a Roman Catholic priest from Europe who had teken up arms when the Japanese invaded, and now headed a guerilla force. Finally he sent her a message. The Japanese are coming in full force. We are retreating. Come with us." Angry, she scrawled a Chinese note, Chi Tao Tu Pu Twai, "Christians never retreat!" He sent back a copy of a Japanese handbill offering $100 each for the capture, dead or alive, of (1) the Mandarin, (2) a prominent merchant, and (3) Ai-weh-deh. She determined to flee to the government orphanage at Sian, bringing with her the children she had accumulated, about 100 in number. (An additional 100 had gone ahead earlier with a colleague.) With the children in tow, she walked for twelve days. Some nights they found shelter with friendly hosts. Some nights they spent unprotected on the mountainsides. On the twelfth day, they arrived at the Yellow River, with no way to cross it. All boat traffic had stopped, and all civilian boats had been seized to keep them out of the hands of the Japanese. The children wanted to know, "Why don't we cross?" She said, "There are no boats." They said, "God can do anything. Ask Him to get us across." They all knelt and prayed. Then they sang. A Chinese officer with a patrol heard the singing and rode up. He heard their story and said, "I think I can get you a boat." They crossed, and after a few more difficulties Ai-weh-deh delivered her charges into competent hands at Sian, and then promptly collapsed with typhus fever and sank into delirium for several days.
As her health gradually improved, she started a Christian church in Sian, and worked elsewhere, including a settlement for lepers in Szechuan, near the borders of Tibet. Her health was permanently impaired by injuries received during the war, and in 1947 she returned to England for a badly needed operation. She remained in England, preaching there.
In 1957, Alan Burgess wrote a book about her, The Small Woman. It was condensed in The Reader's Digest, and made into a movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman. When Newsweek magazine reviewed the movie, and summarized the plot, a reader, supposing the story to be fiction, wrote in to say, "In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!" Miss Gladys Aylward, the Small Woman, Ai-weh-deh, died 3 January 1970.
He Saw God Through His Pen: George Herbert
If you go to the mainstream poetry website Poetry Foundation and click on George Herbertās name, what you read is this: āHe is . . . enormously popular, deeply and broadly inļ¬uential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist of this or any other time.ā This is an extraordinary tribute to a man who never published a single poem in English during his lifetime and died as an obscure country pastor when he was 39. But there are reasons for his enduring inļ¬uence. His Short Life George Herbert was born April 3, 1593, in Montgomeryshire, Wales. He was the seventh of ten children born to Richard and Magdalene Herbert, but his father died when he was three, leaving ten children, the oldest of which was 13. This didnāt put them in ļ¬nancial hardship, however, because Richardās estate, which he left to Magdalene, was sizable. Herbert was an outstanding student at a Westminster preparatory school, writing Latin essays when he was eleven years old, which would later be published. At Cambridge, he distinguished himself in the study of classics. He graduated second in a class of 193 in 1612 with a bachelor of arts, and then in 1616, he took his master of arts and became a major fellow of the university. āHerbertās aim was to feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel.ā In 1619, he was elected public orator of Cambridge University. This was a prestigious post with huge public responsibility. A few years later, however, the conļ¬ict of his soul over a call to the pastoral ministry intensiļ¬ed. And a vow he had made to his mother during his ļ¬rst year at Cambridge took hold in his heart. He submitted himself totally to God and to the ministry of a parish priest. He was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1626 and then became the ordained priest of the little country church at Bemerton in 1630. There were never more than a hundred people in his church. At the age of 36 and in failing health, Herbert married Jane Danvers the year before coming to Bemerton, March 5, 1629. He and Jane never had children, though they adopted three nieces who had lost their parents. Then, on March 1, 1633, after fewer than three years in the ministry, and just a month before his fortieth birthday, Herbert died of tuberculosis, which he had suļ¬ered from most of his adult life. His body lies under the chancel of the church, and there is only a simple plaque on the wall with the initials GH. His Dying Gift Thatās the bare outline of Herbertās life. And if that were all there was, nobody today would have ever heard of George Herbert. The reason anyone knows of him today is because of something climactic that happened a few weeks before he died. His close friend Nicholas Ferrar sent a fellow pastor, Edmund Duncon, to see how Herbert was doing. On Dunconās second visit, Herbert knew that the end was near. So he reached for his most cherished earthly possession and said to Duncon, Sir, I pray deliver this little book to my dear brother Ferrar, and tell him he shall ļ¬nd in it a picture of the many spiritual conļ¬icts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it: and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn it; for I and it are less than the least of Godās mercies. (The Life of Mr. George Herbert, 310ā11) That little book was a collection of 167 poems. Herbertās friend Nicholas Ferrar published it later that year, 1633, under the title The Temple. It went through four editions in three years, was steadily reprinted for a hundred years, and is still in print today. Though not one of these poems was published during his lifetime, The Temple established Herbert as one of the greatest religious poets of all time, and one of the most gifted craftsmen the world of poetry has ever known. āThe eļ¬ort to say more about the glory than you have ever said is a way of seeing more than you have ever seen.ā Poetry was for Herbert a way of seeing and savoring and showing the wonders of Christ. The central theme of his poems was the redeeming love of Christ, and he labored with all his literary might to see it clearly, feel it deeply, and show it strikingly. What we are going to see, however, is not only that the beauty of the subject inspired the beauty of the poetry, but more surprisingly, the eļ¬ort to ļ¬nd beautiful poetic form helped Herbert see more of the beauty of his subject. The craft of poetry opened more of Christ for Herbert ā and for us. Secretary of Godās Praise On the one hand, Herbert was moved to write with consummate skill because his only subject was consummately glorious. āThe subject of every single poem in The Temple,ā Helen Wilcox says, āis, in one way or another, Godā (English Poems of George Herbert, xxi). He writes in his poem āThe Temper (I),ā How should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rymes Gladly engrave thy love in steel, If what my soul doth feel sometimes, My soul might ever feel! Herbert's aim was to feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel. Poetry was entirely for God, because everything is entirely for God. More than that, Herbert believed that since God ruled all things by his sacred providence, everything revealed God. Everything spoke of God. The role of the poet is to be Godās echo. Or Godās secretary. To me, Herbertās is one of the best descriptions of the Christian poet: āSecretarie of thy praise.ā O Sacred Providence, who from end to end Strongly and sweetly movest! shall I write, And not of thee, through whom my ļ¬ngers bend To hold my quill? shall they not do thee right? Of all the creatures both in sea and land Only to Man thou hast made known thy wayes, And put the penne alone into his hand, And made him Secretarie of thy praise. God bends Herbertās ļ¬ngers around his quill. āShall they not do thee right?ā Shall I not be a faithful secretary of thy praise ā faithfully rendering ā beautifully rendering ā the riches of your truth and beauty? Saying Leads to Seeing But Herbert discovered, in his role as the secretary of Godās praise, that the poetic eļ¬ort to speak the riches of Godās greatness also gave him deeper sight into that greatness. Writing poetry was not merely the expression of his experience with God that he had before the writing. The writing was part of the experience of God. Probably the poem that says this most forcefully is called āThe Quidditieā ā that is, the essence of things. And his point is that poetic verses are nothing in themselves, but are everything if he is with God in them. My God, a verse is not a crown, No point of honour, or gay suit, No hawk, or banquet, or renown, Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute: It cannot vault, or dance, or play; It never was in France or Spain; Nor can it entertain the day With a great stable or demain: It is no office, art, or news; Nor the Exchange, or busie Hall; But it is that which while I use I am with Thee, and Most take all. āThe craft of poetry opened more of Christ for Herbert ā and for us.ā His poems are āthat which while I use I am with Thee.ā As Helen Wilcox says, āThis phrase makes clear that it is not the ļ¬nished āverseā itself which brings the speaker close to God, but the act of āusingā poetry ā a process which presumably includes writing, revising, and readingā (English Poems of George Herbert, 255). For Herbert, this experience of seeing and savoring God was directly connected with the care and rigor and subtlety and delicacy of his poetic eļ¬ort ā his craft, his art. For Poor, Dejected Souls Yet Herbert had in view more than the joys of his own soul as he wrote. He wrote (and dreamed of publishing after death) with a view of serving the church. As he said to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, ā[If you] can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public.ā And this is, in fact, what has happened. People have met God in Herbertās poems, and their lives have been changed. Joseph Summers said of Herbertās poems, āWe can only recognize . . . the immediate imperative of the greatest art: āYou must change your lifeāā (George Herbert, 190). Simone Weil, the twentieth-century French philosopher, was totally agnostic toward God and Christianity but encountered Herbertās poem āLove (III)ā and became a kind of Christian mystic, calling this poem āthe most beautiful poem in the worldā (English Poems of George Herbert, xxi). Love (III) Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guiltie of dust and sinne. But quick-eyād Love, observing me grow slack From my ļ¬rst entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lackād any thing. A guest, I answerād, worthy to be here: Love said, you shall be he. I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marrād them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame? My deare, then I will serve. You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat. Herbert had struggled all his life to know that Loveās yoke is easy and its burden is light. He had come to ļ¬nd that this is true. And he ended his poems and his life with an echo of the most astonishing expression of it in all the Bible: The King of kings will ādress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve themā (Luke 12:37). You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat. This is the end of the matter. No more striving. No more struggle. No more āspiritual conļ¬icts [passing] betwixt God and my soul.ā Instead, Love himself serves the poetās soul as he sits and receives. Words as a Way of Seeing Worth George Herbert found, as most poets have, that the eļ¬ort to put the glimpse of glory into striking or moving words makes the glimpse grow. The poetic eļ¬ort to say beautifully was a way of seeing beauty. The eļ¬ort to ļ¬nd worthy words for Christ opens to us more fully the worth of Christ ā and the experience of the worth of Christ. As Herbert says of his own poetic eļ¬ort, āIt is that which, while I use, I am with thee.ā āThe poetic eļ¬ort to speak the riches of Godās greatness gave Herbert deeper sight into that greatness.ā I will close with an exhortation for everyone who is called to speak about great things. It would be fruitful for your own soul, and for the people you speak to, if you also made a poetic eļ¬ort to see and savor and show the glories of Christ. I donāt mean the eļ¬ort to write poetry. Very few are called to do that. I mean the eļ¬ort to see and savor and show the glories of Christ by giving some prayerful eļ¬ort to ļ¬nding striking, penetrating, and awakening ways of saying the excellencies that we see. Preachers have this job supremely. But all of us, Peter says, are called out of darkness to āproclaim the excellenciesā (1 Peter 2:9). And my point here for all of us is that the eļ¬ort to put the excellencies into worthy words is a way of seeing the worth of the excellencies. The eļ¬ort to say more about the glory than you have ever said is a way of seeing more than you have ever seen. Therefore, I commend poetic effort to you. And I commend one of its greatest patrons, the poet-pastor George Herbert. Article by John Piper
