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Monday, January 28, 2008

Life is for living: and living abundantly


Talk about the lazy, hazy days of summer. That's how I've been feeling since Christmas. I haven't felt like maintaining my blogs. This happens to me quite a bit these days - and it is one of the reasons why I have not been very good at journalling until blogs came along. Life is for living, for being in the present moment.

Now, don't misunderstand. I believe in the reflective life. I do reflect. I think reflection is a continuous part of my life, my spiritual existence. But to sit down each day and write what has been lived, what has been thought, what has been experienced takes a lot of time. And to go back years later and relive what I have written? Nuh-uh! Not my style. Not that I haven't done this. I just don't manage to maintain consistency in doing it. I have a large brown paper shopping bag full of journals, jottings, attempts at journals - and I have a couple on the go. But, by and large, they are not literary efforts. They are jottings. They are the working through of ideas, notes of where I am now and where I might be going.

To sum up, I think there is a spiritual narrative of my life going on inside me. The stars of the narrative are me and my Creator and the story is about the journey we are on together. And my recent insight is that, just as I am on a journey, so is my Creator: a journey of surprise and delight in his/her creation, a journey of wonderment in how it is all going and how it will all turn out.

So my summer has been full of the joy of my garden - the pumpkins and tomatoes and basil and beans competing and co-existing and producing. A wild mixture of edibles which I have tended into existence. I have been reading more consistently and voraciously than I have in a long time. While I am always reading one way and another, I have taken the time to be absorbed by and in what I am reading. I have made some new friends simply because I have stepped out in some new ways - and there have been some lovely lunches with Harriet, Lee and Marian. My carport has been turned into a lovely, simple, and most unfashionable living area. The perfect venue for lazy lunches and lingering coffees.

So, dear Reader, please excuse your correspondent if she goes missing in action from time to time. It's because she is living a life which is to be lived - and lived abundantly.