Dear Friends ~ Spending five weeks in India has made me acutely aware of how much I take for granted and even expect from life. Being able to drink clean water, a shelter with heat in winter, breathable air, space to walk, trash out of sight, food in my belly... When I was little my mother used to repeat a line I suspect she may have heard from her own mother, "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." At five or six years old I didn't get it. Seeing up close abject poverty, unbearable squalor, and folks dragging useless legs on filthy ground with flip flops on their hands—it begins to sink in. I did nothing to deserve being born into this life of mine any more than the forlorn toddler hanging at her imploring mother's side did to be born into a slum beside the railroad tracks. Here's another saying: "There but for the grace of God, go I." Yet why should I have been extended the grace of God and not them? These privileges we have been given are not our "rights"—expectations based on pride at how well we have done or self-righteousness at how good we have been. I am reminded of the parable of the talents—to whom much has been given... What are we called to if not humility and gratitude— and compassion?
The object of leisure is work. The object of work is holiness ... meaning wholeness. Recreation is for the sake of work. Leisure time is for the sake of recreation in order that the labourer may the better return to work. Games are like sleep -- necessary for the health of body and mind -- a means to health, the health of the labourer, the one who prays, the contemplative. Leisure is secular, work is sacred. Holidays are the active life, the working life is the contemplative life.