A different kind of resting...

After a full and gentle night of music - with only one minor musical train wreck - today is a sweet day for resting. Often we have had family and friends in for a feast - and there's a beauty and blessing in that - but now that our daughters are older and have families of their own (to say nothing of their own work schedules and needs) we will be resting by ourselves.

There is a quiet and reflective spirit to this type of Thanksgiving resting. Of course we will enjoy turkey - and pie and potatoes, too. And we will decorate the table carefully and celebrate the abundant blessings that our new life affords. We will probably even reminisce a bit about other Thanksgiving feasts because that helps us mark the time and understand how we have changed as the years go by. But it will be done calmly, without the rushed excitement of more communal merriment. It is a reflective way of resting and the older I get the more I look forward to it.

George Winston captures the feeling of this kind of rest:

Buechner writes:
The wisdom of men (and women) is the kind of worldly wisdom that more or less all men have been living by since the cave man. It is best exemplified by such homely utterances as: you've got your own life to lead, business is business, charity begins at home... safety first and so forth... It is in contrast to all this that what St. Paul calls "the foolishness of God" looks so foolish. Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back: "Drive carefully - the life you save may be your own." That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell.

What God says, on the other hand, is "The life you save is the life you lose." In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself, and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring that point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of men's wisdom, he was a Perfect Fool, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of himself is laboring not under a cross but a delusion. There are two kinds of fools in the world: damned fools and what St. Paul calls "fools for Christ's sake."

I think it takes a life time to grasp and treasure becoming a fool for Christ's sake: it takes quiet and it takes practice, resting and sharing, feasting and fasting. I will miss the fun and even foolishness of having the wider family here and laughing so hard that my sides hurt. But in the stillness of today's rest I will find time to offer thanks both for this other foolish calling and those who help me explore it - especially Dianne - who needs my help now with the pies.