I have learned to quit speeding through life, always trying to do too many things too quickly, without taking the time to enjoy each day's doings. I think I always thought of real living as being high. I don't mean on drugs – I mean real living was falling in love, or when I got my first job, or when I was able to help somebody . . . In between the highs I was impatient — you know how it is — life seemed so Daily. Now I love the dailiness. I enjoy washing dishes, I enjoy cooking, I see my father's roses out the kitchen window. I like picking beans. I notice everything – birdsongs, the clouds, the sound of wind, the glory of sunshine after two weeks of rain. These are the things I took for granted before [cancer].
~ Olive Ann Burns quoted in MITTEN STRINGS FOR GOD by Katrina Kenison
To lie fallow is a gift. We don't really know how to do it. Rather we are done by it or undone by it. The moments we are allowed to be in that condition are times of gratitude. It is from these that our freedom comes. It is where authentic being exists. Any fruitfulness arises from that surrendered openness. It is there that God makes each of us a fertile ground, a bearing soil.
