The other day I was driving through the county…, I went to visit a cave…, and then I went on to see some other places…
Very many monasteries, and very many people at the monasteries, clusters of parked cars…, and I was wondering…, why do people go and stand in clusters at the gates, why do they go there…? Monastic life has a form “torn from the world”, but people do not go there wholly, to leave the world…, they bring it with them. They go on the principle that those monks are “cleaner”, and that their prayer carries more “weight” before God…, and they go because they need “something”…, they pay for a pomelnic or two — a list of names handed over to be prayed for…
Having this thought and driving on, I pictured how people arrive at the monastery, and I am watching as the monk who greets them asks them “With what problem?”, and the people answer “with a health problem…”, “with a problem with money…”, “with a problem with the neighbour…”, and in the string of my thoughts the monk turns towards me and asks me “And you, with what problem?”
I caught myself having no answer…, in my mind I fell silent, mute, at that turn of thought…, then I realized… “I have come to give thanks, I am GRATEFUL for my life!”
This thought lit up my day…, so that you understand: I do not have a perfect life, I do not have a family, I do not have many of the things that are considered “needs”, I am divorced, I have no partner…, but I am glad of life and grateful for everything I have lived, for my whole road…
I am not trying to convince you. But if you have a measure of your own, I would like to hear it…
Further: I lost the glove
If you liked how I wrote this: I write one of these a week. Leave your email and you get a message when a new one is out — nothing else.
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