Television presenter and ambassador for a walking charity, Kate Humble set herself a goal. She would journal her walks for a year, observing changes of season, locations, relationships and, above all, her thinking.
She edited and compiled her pieces into a book. A book which I’m enjoying. It’s not a book you would sit down and read from cover to cover in one sitting. It’s more of a box-of-chocolates-type-book that you dip into now and then, enjoying one journal entry at a time.
I’m impressed at the way this writer pulls the reader into her world through her rich descriptions. Just today, I read of her unexpected encounter with friends on a cold afternoon in the damp British countryside … friends who had a Primus stove, water, cups and tea bags. I could almost taste the tea and feel the warmth of the cup in my hands.
Yet I was half a world away, on a back porch of a small unit in Melbourne.
What could I see, hear, feel and taste, I wondered? I went inside, made a cup of coffee and took some risen dough out of the bread maker and spread it on a pizza plate. I brought both out to the back porch, and sat in the sun as the dough rose under the greaseproof covering.
I decided to jot a few notes in the style of the author, Kate Humble. Her book, however, was called ‘Thinking on my Feet’. I’m all for pondering life while walking, but in this case, I thought on my derriere.
It turned out to be quite a meditative process, though that had not been my intention.
My jottings, only slightly edited, follow.
Twenty minutes
‘Rest’ is the priority on luxurious Sunday afternoons.
Children over the fence are playing. They are pretending. “Okay, you can be the shop lady and I’ll be the customer.”
A butterfly flits over fallen leaves, its oranges and browns blending in … well, the browns anyhow. It would be nice if the autumn leaves were more autumnal and less … dead.
Birds of different varieties twitter or whistle or sing. The cat reclines, gazing over her dominion. Near where I sit, a tiny brown spider spins a web, circling around and around in ever tighter circles.
I am distracted momentarily by my dinging phone, though happily so, for it represents connections with people dear to me.
Coffee cools, focaccia rises, time marches on.
It’s time to dress the focaccia with pizza-like toppings and put it in the oven. Creative cooking is, for me, a restorative activity on a day of rest.
A haven of peace in a world gone quite mad is my overgrown, neglected backyard. As if on cue with my thoughts of discord, from over the fence I hear a raised little voice.
“Not fair. I’m not playing anymore.”
A door slams.
‘Shalom’ is shattered.
One day….
Final comments
The Bible has a lot to say about rest, as well as about suffering and decay.
‘Shalom’ is God’s ideal but creation is corrupted. The effects of sin’s curse are all around us. Yet even within this mess, we gain glimpses of ‘shalom’. Our weekly days of rest point us to the ‘capital R’ ‘REST’ that God has promised us.
The Bible puts it this way:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Romans 8:19-21 NIV
One day……