It’s Saturday morning – I have one thing on my mind:
Malls.
Yes, shopping malls! And my great, abiding love for them.
Huge, sprawling monuments to commercial plunder.
Giant rabbit-warrens, ant-hills, bee-hives. Bursting at the seams with frenzied material desire
And I pondered: God bless the malls!
For malls empty the places I truly love, free of the madding crowds
Like Saturday morning, when we were cruising along a gorgeous coastline, by bicycle. Basically all alone
Have you ever cycled along the coast of a little Greek island?
Passed the little stone churches, pavement cafes spilling in to the street, harbour life – acry with gulls and traders, all splashed by the spray of the sea?
You don’t need to. Just drive to St James. It’s all there. On any, ordinary day.
“Ordinary day” usually sounds uninspiring, to most people.
But what if we thought of “ordinary” as “every day” – 365 of them!
Like this poem, kindly sent from Laurian Goodwin, from the USA:
It’s titled Make the ordinary come alive.
It reads:
“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonderand the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when people and pets die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
Thanks Laurian
So, Beth and my morning on Saturday was awesome!
And perfectly.
Magnificently.
Abundantly.
Ordinary.
