"I sit in my living room as November pushes headlong into winter, wilted and weary from a bacterial infection received from the bite of a parasite smaller than the head of a pin. I have been told to rest. And my body, if I listen, says it will take amazing amounts of rest. But I am not skilled at resting. I have my program for happiness and resting does not appear in the syllabus. I am not a power leisure person. When I have told those who know me well I am to rest for one month - rest like I am in a sanitarium - they laugh. Laugh! What do they know? They know I am not a rest-er. And so I have a moment to respond. To enter into God's labor of shaping my life, me, my very self. I must enter into the reality of the moment as it truly is. It is a moment of not doing. Can I become more myself by not doing? Or better - what is to be done while resting? Can I not JUST wait, but become while waiting? And so I am back to the response two people had when I told them I must rest, and rest relentlessly, for a month. "Write, Mom. Write out what you have been given. Give it back to the world, the world you have - which is us." The giving will not leave me with less, as I have lived so much of my life. This I now know. Giving - according to what one has, not according to what one does not have - is the economy of the Kingdom. And the Kingdom is a realm of abundance, a world of richest colors, made so by rain the King of the Land sends. Let me raise my head in gratitude - thus nourishing my heart and soul on the gifts of the King. Thank you."
Now it is April and the long resting of winter is fading. What was learned in those slow moving weeks? I shall try to birth, even as so much outside my windows is, what has been formed within. May it be blessed as a part of the kingdom now, and increase our yearning for Home.
