Skip to main content

One step at a time

Image
By


It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you....

                                                                                     Ps 139:12 (The Message)


At this stage so many things happen all at once that I deliberately choose to only look right in front of me – there’s the sale of the farm, preparing my dad for the move to a retirement village, packing up the workshops at Rietfontein, getting the workshops up and running at our place in Wakkerstroom and moving everything down there, get everything in place to put Matilda’s house in Pretoria up for rent, the packing and moving of all our personal stuff, attend to the health of Matilda’s dad and determine whether we should find him other care facilities, get our house in Wakkerstroom to our liking and do some alterations, and amidst all of this meeting the deadlines of the work for clients. 

I’m afraid that should I look up and too far in the future I’ll panic and I won’t be able to do anything.

So, I’ve switched off all the electric lights of my inner life. Waited for the dark to ascend. Then switched on the single beam of a flashlight, only to illuminate the spot right in front of me where I am placing my foot for the next step.

If I become quiet, focused on the beam of light, breathing in and out, voices come to me in the dark. Gentle, practical voices that soothe and silence the fearful chatter that is never too far off. 

“One step at a time. 
Everything comes one step at a time.

The journey looks long, and the journey looks hard.

But one step ain’t so bad, 
yeah, 
let's take it 
one 
step 
at 
a 
time.”
                                                            - Children of the Tao



The shortest way to do many things,
is to do only one thing at once.

                                                        - Samuel Smiles


Important word, that "if".



George




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle while you work

By
Drawing by Ron Leishman When last did you whistle while working? When last did you hear someone else whistle while working? Somehow it bothers me that whistling has become an almost absent element in our work. The sound of a person whistling a tune while busy somewhere in the house or out in the workshop conveys something of an underlying happiness, satisfaction and contentment. An enjoyment of the work itself. The tune need not be flawless. Applying more air than sound won’t lead to disqualification, as long as the intention is there. Whistling can even be replaced by singing in all that I’ve said up to now. The same principles apply. The absence of any of these two activities bothers me because it says something about us doing the work and the type of work that we do. Can it be that our type of labour in this 21 st century is not conducive to either whistling or singing? What type of work is that then – draining, stressful, pressured? Or are our conclusions ...
8 comments
Read more

A likely Hero: Jara Cimrman

By
As Matilda has already indicated, one of the most difficult things to do after you’ve visited a country is to return and convey something of what you’ve experienced. How do you show a city’s many faces, introduce its inhabitants? How do you tell of the effects a history has on people and of a stance towards life that can actually not be translated into words? In the case of Prague, it is very helpful to have someone like Jara Cimrman. ~ ~ v ~ ~ Petrin Hill, on the left bank of the river Vltava running through Prague, is in many ways a site worth visiting. Climbing the 299 steps of the Petrin Tower, inspired by the Eiffel Tower, gives you one of the most beautiful views of the city. But by going down into its basement, you enter into the psyche of the Czech people. Here, quite unobtrusively, is the museum for the “ Genius, who has not become famous ”. Matilda and I almost stumbled onto it by chance and as we went through the exhibition, our amazement over this brilliant ...
Post a Comment
Read more

You never can tell

By
This morning I was out in the vegetable garden looking for signs of sprouting cabbage and spinach that we had sown a week ago. Among the weeds, I did find the tiny seedlings pushing through bravely, but I had a surprise coming. The young Zulu gardener drew my attention to an abundance of ready food growing in the ruins of the tiny stone cottage only meters away: Umbido, a type of wild spinach, and a staple food in the rural areas. I grew up with much the same in the northern parts of the country, but called Marogo in the Sotho language.  Enter my new helper and friend, Winnie Nkosi. She lives on the edge of the Zaaihoekdam in a traditional mud house with no electricity. Twice a week she walks the four odd kilometres to help me with all things domestic. She has also taken it upon herself to teach me the Zulu language and culture with optimistic determination. The planned lunch menu was immediately ditched in favour of a lesson in local cooking and Winnie showed me the differenc...
1 comment
Read more