Adjustments

"I scrutinize this turbulent soul".
Tara Blaize - Unbearable Lightness.

Where is your ideal holiday location?
Some go back to the same place, time and time again, because it 'clicks' with them.

For me, it appears to be more of a realm than a particular spot, though I do have a few favorites.
Like my late wife, I love the marvel of being on a beach - that place where earth and sea fuse in a special way to create a place where you can enjoy both together.

I'd find it hard to calculate just how many hours or even how many visits I've made in my life, but I know that my passion really found a new level in the mid-eighties. Before that, the sea was a place I sought to avoid because I couldn't swim, but once my beloved encouraged me, gave me confidence, and took me into the water, everything changed.
I still know the sea is much bigger than me, and I am in awe of its power, but when the days are warm and the water is welcoming, I participate in a wonderful, invigorating connection to it.

Something similar has happened recently regarding my relationship to food.

A friend of mine is a superb nutritionist. For several years, she mildly 'suggested' that I might like to think about taking on board some of her advice, but like the sea when I was a child, I've proven reluctant to get too close to what she was saying - to face the fact that my body, principally due to age, has reached a point where it wants me to makes some changes.

About two months ago, something happened.
I'd bought some fresh tomatoes, and rather than just keep them for a salad or a sandwich, I ate one of them without any additions... It was gorgeous. The taste was just exquisite.

The experience caused me to pause.
How often, I wondered, am I missing out on the real flavour of what I'm eating because I never taste it the way I did this tomato?

The thought, as is often the case, got filed for a time, but some upset stomachs sharply brought it back to the fore, so I thought I'd better do more than just toy with the idea.

Home cooking with decent ingredients, seeking to cultivate eating with a healthier edge began, and it's hard to put into words just how enjoyable it's been. The pleasure of really cooking well, or relishing the smells, the feeling of real food, as you prepare things you know are going to do you good... it's comparable with a great day enjoying life.

Entertainer Penn Jillette has a very candid You Tube video about the change eating well has made to him. What's interesting is though he is an atheist, he admits that making such a change physically has had a huge impact on his mental landscape as well, bringing about a new passion to be there for others, especially his children.

What such examples speak to is how we can all become so blinded by what we're told (or what we tell ourselves) is good, that we can not only miss the way it's hurting us, but more importantly, neglect to understand what we're really missing - the tastes, smells, flavours, qualities of life that are actually right there, but our habitual pursuit of what we deem as good means that we totally miss out on things substantially more than what we know.

Christianity is about that.
When Jesus meets people, He seeks to tell them that what they have become used to is so impoverished in comparison to what there is to know and to share.
Life isn't meant to be lived at the merely mundane level of just satisfying what we deem to be necessary right now.
What happens when we open our eyes, our souls, to look deeper, harder, than merely wanting or needing the superficial? What is possible, when we see that what we are encountering now is just a beginning, not an end in itself?

Life continues to be an opening voyage of real discovery for me, and I hope that you too will make such a journey.

I came to give life, said Jesus,
and to give it abundantly.