Lack of speed

Photograph by George Angus

Matilda’s nephew Liam has a friend Stephan. Although being only 9 now, the 2 of them has been a fountain of wisdom over the years. A few years ago, on starting playing rugby for the first time, Stephan became very frustrated. As soon as he got the ball, he was tackled. Quite upset he told Matilda’s brother in law: “Oom William, I just can’t get my speed!”

I can relate with Stephan’s frustration. Ever since we came to Barrowfield there have been so many practicalities that needed attention that it has been difficult to get my speed writing and meditating. My mind is filled with pipe diameters, the solenoid on tractor starters, pressure pumps, skylights, ropes and rigging, tending to our fathers’ health and adjustment in the retirement village, setting up internet modems, bookshelves and all the rest. In the spare moments that I get to sit at the computer, I am so tired that it is difficult to keep my eyes focused and open.

I have to be honest though. This not getting my speed makes me feel more frustrated than guilty. I do not believe that the purpose of our faith is to have us jumping through moral hoops and obligations. It has more to do with guiding us on a journey and in the process helping us to discover God in all things. So, I am not a bad Christian for not doing the things a good Christian ought to do. I am a frustrated Christian for not having time to go deeper. I want to read this very life of mine with everything in it, and I mean everything, and revel in all of God’s workings in me through all of it.

There is a real danger that I tend to repeat myself (and without shame I confess that I do), but I fear that I might not succeed in getting this absolute basic truth across. That it is heard but that it doesn’t register. This is more revolutionary than nice. It changes the way we approach these very lives we live. My life now is not an obstacle to be overcome on the way to heaven. It is the very context of God’s presence and activity.

God comes to us disguised as our lives.

                                                                  Paula D’Arcy

What’s in the way IS the way.

                                                                          Mary O’Malley

As I prepare a meal

or fix a door

I encounter Christ

of cup and saw.

                                                                John Hunt

While writing this it dawned on me: it is not my speed that I’m missing. It is my slowness. And that it is, in the language of Stephan’s phrase, the same thing.

And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business,

and to work with your own hands…..

                                                            1 Thessalonians 4:11(KJV)

I have to study to be quiet. And really listen to the song of pipe, cable and drill, the work of my hands. To study to be quiet....

Sorry, no new message. Only an old discovery, anew.

George