Getting a Life ain't the Problem ... Having it, now there's the thing

No, I haven't actually been any place like this recently, alas ... but I have been too busy living my life to blog just for a bit.

The Tour de France was on, and, with my bones too exploded to fly to Europe any more, well, what's better than three weeks in France courtesy of the Versus Channel on television, and yes, well, I love the cycling race too. We would settle in to watch the DVR (well, I'm not getting up at 4:30 am, there are limits even to love), with our sandwich au jambon (French mustard, of course), and our Cafe au Lait (yes, I know, dead naff to drink this in the afternoon, but tough), some crudites, and have a lovely visit.

Then it was off to deal with bumper book sales, nearly a full-time job at the moment. Phew.

And a lot going on in the church I consult for.

Some time back my friend Biddies wrote about getting up in the morning and reading the news and how upsetting that can be.

Well, we never, never, ever do that. We awaken to silence, we meditate, we have a cup of tea, we stare for a while just in noticing mode, we do a little work, we listen to music. No news until at least mid-afternoon.

This is nothing compared to what I did the whole time my children were young. We'd go to our cottage on the lake (those were flusher times, then) for six weeks and the rule was simple. No television, no radio, (most UUs are with me up to this point), no newspapers, no magazines (some are fading, but a lot of UUs are still with me), and no books. (The last one loses just about every blessed and unblessed UU).

Our motto for our six weeks was -- "Something Is Happening, and We Are It!" A corrective against all those who currently clearly believe that what is reported on television is more real than their own lives, indeed, all those who clearly these days believe that if they aren't themselves on television, they aren't really alive.

And so I say unto you (as preachers like to do) Something Is Happening, and You Are It!

In My Other Life ...

Years ago, there was a cartoon called the Nebbish (Yiddish for a weak-willed, timid, or ineffectual person). The cartoon was a simple line drawing in a single panel of a blobbish character who sighed a lot and expressed the inner life of only normally achieving people. (I tried to find a sample on-line, but guess no one has put them up.)

In one cartoon, the nebbish is sitting under a street light musing to himself - "I'm waiting for the meek to inherit the earth."

In similar mood, one day, Ziggy (a similar cartoon character) mutters to himself "I like fantasy. You meet a better class of people." Is there, shock horror, a UU who has never felt this way about their own congregation? (Oh, say it ain't so...)

Anywaaaaay, today I'm grooving on imagination. My legs not taking me much of anywhere at the moment, and yelping at me when they do, I am still having a ball. Right now I am surfing the Severn Bore.

For those of you who don't know, the Severn Bore is a marvellous wave created by the combination of the moon's gravitational pull on ocean waters and the sudden forced entry of those waters into the narrow path of the tidal Severn River in Britain. This creates, several times a month, and especially at times of Spring and Fall tides, a wonderful sudden wave - the Severn Bore. As Thomas Harrel wrote in 1824 "The river does not swell by degrees but rolls in ... foaming and roaring as though it were enraged by the opposition which it encounters".

Often as high as six feet (arising from nothing all of a sudden), and surging inland at about 10 miles an hour, there are those who love to surf it. Now you might wonder why I would bother imagining and fantasizing about a miserable little six foot wave, but what if I were to tell you that, in this river magic, you can surf the damned thing as far as five miles inland! Now a five mile surfing wave is something else, amen? Let alone surfing miles from the ocean, whizzing upriver, driven by the pull of the moon, cruising past fields, houses and trees! (As described by Alex Wade in a recent edition of the London Sunday Times.)

You have to be careful. Fall off at the wrong place, and the undertow will make exit from the river nearly impossible. Some surfers plan their exits, getting off at a wide place in the river, jumping in a car, driving upstream to pick the wave up in a narrow place again. But for the experts, world records for the longest wave surfed are regularly set on the Severn.

So that's where I've been today. (While the car has been getting major repairs, I quilted some beautiful stuff, and my leg hurt.) Where have you been today? Got a good fantasy going?