Renewal

Do you ever get bored with your life (I'm not talking to the Grainiac who just got back from a cruise!  I want your life!!!!)?  Yesterday was my first day alone at home.  I had all sorts of plans...most involved organization and cleaning. Uggggh.  I did get some of my planned activity done.  I put the TV tray away and then I lounged.  I even fell asleep in the middle of my solitaire game.  I blame this recent desire of inactivity on my last very busy school semester.  I just don't seem to have physical or mental energy.  I'm a slug.  My body is exhausted and has gone dormant.  Life cycles will do that.  The ground needs a time of renewal...think winter.  I think my time of renewal happens in the heat of the summer.  It IS hot here!  I prefer to sit in my air-conditioned home with a floor fan blowing on me.  I think I've gone through menopause so it can't be that!!!!  Or is this some sort of Mother Nature joke where the hot flashes continue for the rest of your life?  Darn that Eve!

I'm reading a book called "Sabbath."  I was intrigued with the subtitle "Finding rest, renewal, and delight in our busy lives."  The author says Sabbath is more than abstaining from "work" and adding television and errands or house cleaning.  That would be substituting one busy-ness with another.  Sabbath "is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true...honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us."**  Isn't that wonderful?  We are programmed to stop and listen and smell the roses.  We become slugs when the body screams to quiet yourself.  We live in a society where one is looked upon as lazy if you aren't going, going, gone.  Take time to renew your bodies, Grainiacs.  Feel free to lounge on the couch and don't feel guilty-- unless you are doing it all day long and eating bon-bons.  Then you might need to pop in an exercise video too!



**Wayne Muller. Sabbath. New York: Bantam Books, 1999.