From Hart to Hearts
A Message from Rev Linda Hart for the month of January 2010
Some not truly random thoughts for January:
There’s an old joke I used to tell back in the US about a man hearing a difficult diagnosis from his doctor.
‘There’s bad news and there’s good news. The bad news is that you have 6 months to live. The good news is that you’ll be living it in Iowa so it will seem like 6 years.’ Feel free to insert your own name of a place where there’s not much more to do than to watch the corn grow.
I don’t know about you, but there are times when I could use a place where life was slow, and taking time to watch the world was all I needed to do.
My brother Michael started an almost daily practice of posting a photograph he’s taken to his Facebook account. He puts a strapline on each photo: ‘Somewhere festive...’ or ‘Somewhere pastel...’ or ‘Somewhere facing south...’. He calls it his ‘Somewhere Photo Series’.
I love the photos especially because they are often of places I know from my childhood or familiar places around Washington, DC which is near where we grew up and where he still lives. Some of the photos are oddly coloured, or at an interesting angle. But even when I don’t recognise the places, I look carefully and am pleased to have stopped and seen ‘somewhere’, no matter if it is familiar or strange. Knowing that it was important and interesting enough to show up in a photo is enough for me.
In the autumn, as Claire and I walked to school along the Thames, a fish leapt up out of the water. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, and swung around in time to see it splash back into the water. I stopped and exclaimed ‘Did you see that? A fish! It was a fish jumping out of the water! Right there! Right there! Did you see?’
With the boredom that is the special gift of children of her age, Claire replied, ‘Oh, but Mum, would you stop? It won’t extend your life one minute! Come on! We’ll be late for school!’
Of course she’s right. Time will continue to flow along as it does, and stopping to look at something won’t make my life or hers any longer at all. It will, however, extend the quality of the life that we lead, and that counts for a lot.
I’ve been thinking a lot about seeing. Seeing places. Being slow enough to watch for something worth seeing. Trying to live as if six months could be stretched into six years by virtue of my attention to what I see, what I hear, the quality of my presence to all that there is in my life.
How about you? What is calling for your attention in this new year? What can you see better if you slow down, if you look more carefully? How much can you extend the quality of your life?
See you in church,
Linda