Pastor Tom's Blog
Happy birthday to me
September 2, 2010
Run-up to the day was small scale. Birthdays aren’t big events for our family. Most holiday observances and special occurrences tend to be low-impact and understated. This one was no exception. It’s about as exciting as watching a row of zeroes turn up across the car’s odometer.
The celebrations were enjoyable in a quiet kind of way. Lunch with the staff on my actual birthday, between hospital visits to send church members off to surgical appointments. A cupcake with one candle, the singing led by our grandson. Another year turned over on the life-o-meter.
Numbers have always fascinated me. The first time I remember applying a ratio to my age and future milestones was on my 13th birthday, when I realized that I was one-fifth the way to the usual retirement age, and wondered if I had accomplished 20 percent of what I hoped to do.
This birthday lends itself to fractions because it’s three times the age of majority, and handily divisible by both 3 and 7 — for what that’s worth. If I have the Biblical three score and ten years to live, I’ve passed through 90 percent of my lifetime. Have I said, done, heard, learned, taught, and accomplished nine-tenths of a life’s worth?
The trouble with small fractions is that they tempt me to plan ahead. It’s easy to build castles in the sky, or perhaps in the future. The trouble with large fractions is that they tempt me to dwell on the past, substituting inflated recollection for appreciating the present or revisionism for accepting forgiveness — that of others, and my own.
Happy birthday to me. Another year is here, and like all those past and those to come, it’s good for now.
Life is local
August 23, 2010
Vacation is a good thing. It was fun to go on vacation, and it was fun to come back. It was also an opportunity to practice living by a principle I want to implement more fully in my existence and experience.
Life is local. Be here now.
I confess to daydreaming about the vacation before we left. Much of our travel, schedule, menus, and activities on vacation vary little from one year to another. We’ve found a place we enjoy, landlords who have become friends, a pace that doesn’t tax us, and things to do that are enough of a difference from our usual lives that they are really refreshing.
There are always a few surprises: a new restaurant, an Andrew Wyeth exhibition at the art museum, first-time adventures with a kayak, different books, and continuously-entertaining conversations.
I’m fighting the urge to be somewhere else or have it be another time. I tried to have my mind stay with my body while I counted down the days until we left. I tried to let myself be on vacation during the whole two weeks. I tried to be ready to return to life in central Ohio and pastoring at Northwest UMC the minute I drove into the driveway at home.
Life is local. Be here now.
It’s easy to ponder with regret all the times I wanted to be somewhere else, to be doing something else, to be another age, to have more money, to have fewer worries, or to have my life be more exciting. At every one of those moments, did I wish away something wonderful that I could discover only by staying in the moment and being where I was?
Life is local. Be here now.
At the speed of life
August 16, 2010
We joke about vacation effects early in our stay. “I can almost feel my IQ falling.” “What time is it?” “I don’t care what time it is. What day is it?”
Vacation is a screeching slow down from our usual pace. We have an alarm clock, and do not turn it on. With four people in the house right now, we have three cell phones, one iPhone, one BlackBerry, one iPad, and two notebook computers, all charged and ready, but most used only an hour a day. The exception is the iPad. Its novelty gets it passed from hand to hand, mostly for games. The single television is tuned to The Weather Channel, our only interest to find out what’s coming over the mountain.
I didn’t leave our isolated location for a week. There was no lack of things to do: crossword puzzles to solve, journals, books, and alumni publications to scan and tear, some beautiful days for sailing and floating around in the bay, and nothing. That was the number four thing on my to-do list.
4. Nothing
It’s during vacation that it occurs to me to ask if the rest of my life is too busy. Do I do things that are unnecessary? Do I spend too much time on what doesn’t matter? John Wesley told his preachers to do everything at the right time, not to waste time, and not to spend any more time on something than was necessary. (I would have quoted the historic question, but I didn’t bring a copy of The Book of Discipline along on vacation.)
In a few days, I’ll go home, get back to my daily schedule, and no longer reflect on whether my life is too busy.
There won’t be time.
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