I am not old, but I am getting older, as we all are. What strikes me is not so much how life changes, but how I change. I would really have to say that the last 10-12 years have been busy for me, I mean really busy, insanely busy at times. It has also been the most fruitful period of my life, if not always the most enjoyable. I am also starting to see how internally driven I am. This is not a revelation, but to begin to discover just how driven I am is equal parts surprising and disturbing. I am not driven to succeed, but to pursue the things that I think matter. As things ramp down in my ministry for the summer, at least the religious education aspect, I have found myself the past three of four evenings just exhausted, what I would call bone tired.
I know that I need to make some changes, to have fewer commitments in order to spend more time at home, more time in prayer, more time on the trails hiking, to finish a major writing project, and certainly to read more. All of this will be a point of discernment for me these next three months. Of course, blogging is something that always requires discernment for me because of the way I blog, which is like I do everything else in my life, intensely. Hell, even the theology, philosophy, and literature I read, not to mention the movies I prefer and the music to which I listen, are intense. I make no apologies for that at all. The criteria I use is that if something is worth doing, it's worth putting all of myself into it. Frankly, I have found a lot of things, even things I was good at, that weren't worth doing.
All of this puts me in mind of the U2 song
Kite, which begins:
"Something is about to give
I can feel it coming
I think I know what it means
I'm not afraid to die
I'm not afraid to live
And when I'm flat on my back
I hope to feel like I did"
The day I lose that intensity, which is indicative of my desire, which is what leads me to recognize my need, will be the day I die, the day my need will be fulfilled and my desire satisfied. St. Paul writing from his desire, says:
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" (
1 Cor. 13:12 ESV).
"Did I waste it?
Not so much I couldn't taste it
Life should be fragrant
Roof top to the basement"
