Savouring life
It’s never good to start a new thing when you are heading off for travels around the country and the world in the next few weeks. Ah well. Updates will be sporadic and random over the summer months. Today I’m off to Southampton then to Guildford, London, back to Guildford and then finally back to Brighton. All in the space of 6 days. Anyway. Here’s a quote from my guru of the moment, Eugene Peterson.
“We wake up each morning in a world we did not make. How did it get here? How did we get here? We open our eyes and see the sun careen over the horizon. We wiggle our toes. A mocking bird takes off and improvises on themes set down by robins, vireos and wrens, and we marvel at the intricacies. The smell of frying bacon works its way into our nostrils and we begin anticipating buttered toast, scrambled eggs, and coffee brewed from our favorite Javanese beans.
There is so much here- around, above, below, inside, outside. Even with the help of poets and scientists we can account for very little of it.
After a while we get used to it and quit noticing. Somewhere along the way this wide eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself: the would contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine, through which we sleepwalk.
But not for long. Something always shows up to jar us awake, a childs question, a fox’s sleek beauty, a sharp pain, a pastors sermon, a fresh metaphor, an artists vision, a slap in the face, scent from a crushed violet. We are again awake, alert, in wonder: how did this happen? And why this? Why anything at all? Why not nothing at all?
Gratitude is our spontaneous response to all this: to life. Something wells up within us: Thank you!”
(from ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places’)
I remain committed to staying awake to this world and not submitting to the sleepwalk through the beauty all around me. And if that sounds a bit too like American Beauty then fear not, there will be no video tapes of plastic bags appearing here. Just a fresh appreciation of life in all it’s amazing detail. (and thanks to the one who made such detail!)
“We wake up each morning in a world we did not make. How did it get here? How did we get here? We open our eyes and see the sun careen over the horizon. We wiggle our toes. A mocking bird takes off and improvises on themes set down by robins, vireos and wrens, and we marvel at the intricacies. The smell of frying bacon works its way into our nostrils and we begin anticipating buttered toast, scrambled eggs, and coffee brewed from our favorite Javanese beans.
There is so much here- around, above, below, inside, outside. Even with the help of poets and scientists we can account for very little of it.
After a while we get used to it and quit noticing. Somewhere along the way this wide eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself: the would contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine, through which we sleepwalk.
But not for long. Something always shows up to jar us awake, a childs question, a fox’s sleek beauty, a sharp pain, a pastors sermon, a fresh metaphor, an artists vision, a slap in the face, scent from a crushed violet. We are again awake, alert, in wonder: how did this happen? And why this? Why anything at all? Why not nothing at all?
Gratitude is our spontaneous response to all this: to life. Something wells up within us: Thank you!”
(from ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places’)
I remain committed to staying awake to this world and not submitting to the sleepwalk through the beauty all around me. And if that sounds a bit too like American Beauty then fear not, there will be no video tapes of plastic bags appearing here. Just a fresh appreciation of life in all it’s amazing detail. (and thanks to the one who made such detail!)
posted by Kath at 9:23 am
1 Comments:
I will steal that Peterson book off you when you've finished it.
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