Spring Training

                                                        

                                           

 A good thing about being in my 70s is that life slows down. When I was younger, I figuratively had a lot of fastballs throw at me; some belt-high, some at my head. But now I see mostly off-speed stuff which allows me to enjoy the ball’s symmetry and its gravitational arc as it crosses the plate.

Yup, things have definitely slowed down. These days I seem to do more seeing than doing these days, not a bad development when you think about it. It can be difficult to concomitantly do and appreciate, but one can see and appreciate something at the same time. I don’t know why that is, but there is a richness in life now that wasn’t there before.

Tomorrow we enter the season of Lent, and not to overstate the baseball analogy, we can enter our own spring training and place ourselves before God. We don’t have to sequester in the desert and be tempted for 40 days. Christ did that for us. But starting tomorrow, we are called to look within ourselves -not in a forbidding way, getting fitted for that hair shirt and beating ourselves up -but thinking about our shortcomings with an eye toward improvement, gaining more purpose in our lives.

Much earlier in life, for me as a Catholic, I gave up things during Lent. Purportedly to honor God, but many times it became a bargaining tool, to petition for something I wanted. But in Lent, I now realize it’s thinking and talking to God for help. I need more God in my life…and less Jim.

I hope, by turning inward this year, Lent will lead me outward. To bring purchase to the heartbeat of God, and secure in a humble way, God’s love. And give me the ability to realize the good in others and will it for them.

Simple stuff really.

And the good news? No matter what, God will keep throwing those off-speed pitches as we get older. He has an eternal supply.




(hat courtesy of google images)

A Good 16 Minutes

I can’t stand to watch the morning news with my coffee anymore, and there are only 200 or so Law and Order episodes, so I like to sample Youtube and found Anne Lamont’s TED talk on 12 truths she came up with as she approached her 61^st birthday. She can be acerbic at times, but always interesting and humorous. I know your time is valuable, so I’ve listed just a few of her insights, but you owe it to yourself to go on Youtube and listen to her. The talk lasts 16 minutes. Most are direct quotations mingled with some paraphrasing.

Anne Lamont: The 12 Truths I Learned from Writing and Life – TED talk

“I’m not 47, the age I like to feel but I’m not. I’m every age I’ve ever been and so are you.”

1.     “All truth is a paradox. Life is a precious, unfathomable, and a beautiful thing.”

2.     “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes. Including you.”

3.     Almost nothing outside of you will help you in a lasting way unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy or achieve or date serenity or peace of mind. I so resent that, but improvement is an inside job.

4.      Try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. We’re all broken at times. No one could help me get sober except me. I had to reach out to my higher power that I call God. An acronym for God can be “gift of desperation.”  

5.     Chocolate is not actually a food.

6.     “Grace is spiritual WD40. The mystery is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as he loves my grandchild. Go figure. The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us. Grace finds you exactly where you are but doesn’t leave you where it found you.”

7.     “Laughter is carbonated holiness that lets us breathe.”

8.     “God means goodness. A good name for God is not me.”

9.     “Food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.”

10.  Death – “We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but the person that died will live again fully in your heart if you don’t seal it off.” Leonard Cohen said, “There are cracks in everyone. That’s how the light gets in.”