A Time Apart
Hey there,
So it's been a little while since I've posted anything. Here are the quickest highlights -- the semester ended; I got incredibly sick (thank you body for staying well until after all my work was done!); I house sat for a friend for a month; spent a week in a hermitage at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico; started refinishing my kitchen cabinets; spent a week in Austin at a conference for the Fund for Theological Education, and have generally tried very hard to SLOW DOWN.
You know how endowments work? There's a big pot of money and the owner spends off the interest accrued by the big pot, but is never supposed to spend the principle (because then you have less money there to generate interest -- you have the cash in the present, but have a reduced capacity to generate cash in the future). I spent too much of my spiritual principle this spring and needed some time to build it back up so I could start living off the interest again. Don't know that I'm completely there yet, but every day is calmer than the one before.
It is lovely. I am happy. The best part is that slowing down has given me time to catch up with myself and I now have more to share. So stay tuned! Who knows what will come to me next, but right now I'm pondering Jesus' parable about pruning dead/unfruitful branches. I helped out at the farm where I get my veggies the other weekend and had the job of weeding the strawberries. At first I felt bad to be pulling up perfectly good plants simply because they weren't what farmer Allan wanted to grow, then I remembered a theme of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh -- all of creation is part of a cycle of life (and that cycle is how we are all connected to one another).
To Nhat Hanh, the rose is the garbage is the rose. Roses decay, get nasty, and we throw them out. That nastiness is what then goes to fertilize future roses. So these 'weeds' that I was pulling weren't being wasted -- they were going back into the soil to fertilize the strawberries, which would also eventually die to go back into the soil to fertilize squash next year.
Scripture warns us about staying in the vine (those who don't produce fruit will be 'pruned' and thrown into the fire). That always made me uneasy before, but now I wonder whether there might be another way to look at it. A way in which the weeds actually live fully through their being pruned. That is how they return to the earth and generate new life.
I'll ponder and get back to ya!
Love,
Becky
So it's been a little while since I've posted anything. Here are the quickest highlights -- the semester ended; I got incredibly sick (thank you body for staying well until after all my work was done!); I house sat for a friend for a month; spent a week in a hermitage at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico; started refinishing my kitchen cabinets; spent a week in Austin at a conference for the Fund for Theological Education, and have generally tried very hard to SLOW DOWN.
You know how endowments work? There's a big pot of money and the owner spends off the interest accrued by the big pot, but is never supposed to spend the principle (because then you have less money there to generate interest -- you have the cash in the present, but have a reduced capacity to generate cash in the future). I spent too much of my spiritual principle this spring and needed some time to build it back up so I could start living off the interest again. Don't know that I'm completely there yet, but every day is calmer than the one before.
It is lovely. I am happy. The best part is that slowing down has given me time to catch up with myself and I now have more to share. So stay tuned! Who knows what will come to me next, but right now I'm pondering Jesus' parable about pruning dead/unfruitful branches. I helped out at the farm where I get my veggies the other weekend and had the job of weeding the strawberries. At first I felt bad to be pulling up perfectly good plants simply because they weren't what farmer Allan wanted to grow, then I remembered a theme of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh -- all of creation is part of a cycle of life (and that cycle is how we are all connected to one another).
To Nhat Hanh, the rose is the garbage is the rose. Roses decay, get nasty, and we throw them out. That nastiness is what then goes to fertilize future roses. So these 'weeds' that I was pulling weren't being wasted -- they were going back into the soil to fertilize the strawberries, which would also eventually die to go back into the soil to fertilize squash next year.
Scripture warns us about staying in the vine (those who don't produce fruit will be 'pruned' and thrown into the fire). That always made me uneasy before, but now I wonder whether there might be another way to look at it. A way in which the weeds actually live fully through their being pruned. That is how they return to the earth and generate new life.
I'll ponder and get back to ya!
Love,
Becky
posted by Becky at 7/13/2006 11:34:00 AM
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