Dear Tom:
Fast approaching is Lent and what has become my discipline and tradition of writing forty meditations on forty days. Why do I do it? Well the truth is I enjoy doing it, and I get a lot out of it. Writing new meditations every year can get tired and stale, like I do at times. But part of the joy is finding new words and ways to say things, or to put old combinations together to form a new way of saying things or to make the message better understood. I read once that if you have to choose between words that mean more than what you have experienced and words that mean less, choose the latter. That way you leave room for you and your readers to move around in them.
Well what do my struggles have to do with “the price of pudding?” I think we also try find more into our lives and other person’s lives than actually experienced. You are familiar with the term “don’t read too much into this.” Sometimes we try to read into an experience more meaning than God may intend. All apples that fall from trees aren’t doing it to prove Newton’s laws of Gravity. Some just fall because they are ripe for picking and ready to be eaten. An encounter with a serious disease may not be a sign to quit one’s job and paint full time, it may just be a sign to ease up a little at work, and take one’s easel out of the closet. We need to give our experiences a “little room to move around in.” They all don’t have to be life altering, maybe just a little nudge in the right direction.
Our lives may be a lot like writing words. When we find it becoming a little tired and stale, look for a few new ways of living or finding new combinations of how we currently live to find a better way or obtaining better understanding. And remember to give ourselves “a little room.”
Your friend, Webb
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