Noticings – August 18, 2021

I’m back! I’ve spent the last four weeks packing up one house, moving, and unpacking and settling into our new home. It’s fantastic, and we absolutely love it – and I’m happy to be back to work. Mostly that’s because I needed a break! Moving is incredibly hard work. I needed to come back to work for a rest! It has been a never-ending list of honey-dos. Now, I’m generally not a very handy guy, but in these last weeks I’ve painted rooms, installed closet rods, shelves, dimmer switches, shower wands, recycling holders, bicycle racks, towel hooks, medicine cabinets, ceiling lights, reassembled exercise machines, and cut back tree branches – not to mention unpacking a gazillion boxes. Honey-do-this, honey-do-that! It’s endless! (I’m joking, of course! We’ve done it all as a team and it’s been lovely. Hard work, but lovely.)

My favourite thing that I’ve installed are the hooks on the wall of my new music room for my guitars! I have dreamed about having a music room forever, and to have my guitars displayed on the wall. That is now a reality. It’s a dream come true. Those are the kinds of things that have made all the hard work feel so worth it.

The best thing about working through all those honey-dos is that as the house takes shape and we settle in we are more and more able to enjoy the space. When I sit out on our back deck in the morning with a coffee and I look around all I see are trees and pastures. And in those blissfully quiet moments I realize that my honey-dos have become like honeydew! No, not the delicious melon, but the sweet residue that exudes from certain plants in hot weather. It’s kind of like the sweat of your brow when you work hard, but sweet and natural and pleasing.

And that is more or less the essence of spirituality. It’s not escaping to a mountaintop to get away from the tasks of living – it’s the deep awareness that your honey-dos can be honeydew if you are open to experiencing them in that way. That’s harder to appreciate when the air is turning blue because one of your installation jobs has gone south! (Yes, ministers know those words too!) But it’s much easier to see when you pause and breathe deeply – like on the deck in the morning, or sitting in your guitar-decorated sanctuary.

So I’m back to work – and I guess that means my challenge is to savour the honeydews in the honey-dos of ministry. Time to pour another coffee and get to it.