It's so simple when looked at from one basic premise: Life is the opportunity to relate. And then so magnificently difficult the complexity of how much we have to relate it. It is as if out of God's desire to make sure there are relationship, such an abundance has been made that we almost can't help but recurrently be overstressed among the ubiquity of what do make and do and how to feel among them all!
It would be like being given infinity for Christmas, where no amount of opening will ever open all of the gifts of relating poured out to us. And everywhere you turn, more and more and more. The tedium of them, the tiresome endless stream of them, the questionable nature of each, the cautions and excitements we quake at our questions of how to relate, how much, how little, what's sufficient, how do we feel in response to their relating to us? And on and on. This excess of relationships, and still we can want more and different and other and better and more particularly satisfying, and less of what doesn't feel so good, and all the guilts and resentments and jostling for position when feeling too left out of some and too caught up in others!
JESUS and Hallelujah! that we get to relate!
And OMG! how will we manage it all?
And then on top of it all
another Christmas comes around
and those damn wise men had to go and give baby Jesus those gifts
and now we're obliged to give likewise
to the already too many relationship we're trying to juggle and balance
and attend to and be enough for the maintenance of.
And meanwhile, the Kingdom of Heaven
is apparently already inside us.
And how sharply our attentions can shift
to feeling anything but already heavenly filled.
So, yes to relationships
and may we each get very good at being involved
with just enough
to not overwhelm ourselves
turning the whole thing against the value
it started out to be
which is very simply
to simply have something to relate to.
--Steve
Sunday, December 20, 2009
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how marvelous that i read this shortly after pondering the oncoming christmas this morning in the shower...why and what and how and am i doing it right and am i doing enough? and then this...and yes, something like peace. thank you.
ReplyDeletedan
We make much of the world, which I think is the point of it. But sometimes we make more of it than is very fun. And fun, I think, is the point of it, too. So less can be more fun than trying to pack too much in. But packing a lot in can be fun, too.
ReplyDeleteI guess it pays to be in touch with how much you really want to take on, and to really question just how necessary everything else is that's trying its best to convince you of the necessity of your compliance.
It's all just the great self having fun with itself. And sometimes it has a great laugh at how serious it can make of all this stab at fun.
--Steve