Meetings. The kind that make you want to live longer with more energy, and the kind that sap the will to live.
To do lists. Unrealistic in length, unhealthy in guilt production, so unlikely to be done.
Too much sitting, talking, desk addiction, computer and mouse attachment like umbilical cord or intravenously administered information.
Need exercise. So last night spent a while on the exercise bike listening to a Christmas CD with some wonderfully therapeutic music. One track in particular, Gesu Bambino, sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Made me slow down.
Which brings me to an odd observation I want to make and then think about. One of the best Christmas presents Sheila and I ever received came two or three years ago. Couretesy of our daughter Aileen. Two tickets for Pavarotti live at the Glasgow Exhibition Centre the following July. I don't mind telling you. The best part of £200 for them, and considerable online activity to get the pick of the best seats. Then we heard Pavarotti was ill with cancer, and soon the concert was cancelled. Later Pavarotti died and our chance was gone. So we never got to use the tickets. And know what? In one very important sense it doesn't matter that we didn't get to hear one of the finest voices in our lifetime. What mattered is that the gift was given, the intention was clear, a once in a lifetime chance and no expense spared. Of course we were disappointed. But these two tickets had already worked their magic; they'd said important things every parent needs and wants to hear.
So. How important is the actual gift, compared to the love and kindness and intent that thought up the idea, and made it happen? Sitting there sweating away on the exercise bike, listening to the voice we nearly heard live, not for the first time I was reminded of the sacrament of generosity, within and beyond our families.
And the quite remarkable and unsettling thought that generous intention and costly expense are themselves the gift - the giver is the gift, and the gift itself merely the evidence of that which represents value of a higher order.
Och Christmas. A lot of sentimental nonsense, just a time for rational calculation to give way to uncalculating extravagance in the good cause of the other person.
In other words, the gift of Christ was never meant to make sense in any way we can get our own heads round. A time for the foolishness of generosity, an opportunity to say things too easily left unsaid, and to do it in ways that lack ambiguity. The generous act is a relational statement - which amongst other things is why when we think of God's coming amongst us in the gift of the Word made flesh, we are confronted with self giving love, making itself real, and known, as gift.
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