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THAT FALLOW FEELING
March 14, 2005
 
I check our bank accounts online. I check the Farm's account. I pay a bill. I change somebody's contact information in my address book. I add somebody to the eMo list and take somebody else off because she can't seem to figure out how to remove herself. I answer an email about a speaking engagement and call the travel agent because I don't remember anything about what I said I wanted to do about airplanes to North Carolina, and I have to be there this Wednesday.

I do all these things instead of writing the eMo because I can't think of anything to write. Neither Noodle nor Gypsy has done anything interesting yet this morning, and I haven't even seen What's-Her-Name. I did see Q, but our reunion after my absence this weekend was private.

Coming home after an absence makes me want quiet. I don't want to go places and see things. I don't want to do things. Last week I gave away tickets to a show I like very much because I just couldn't face going to it. I experience this contracting away from too much stimulation as fatigue, but I think I am not really tired. I just need quiet. I need some emptiness.

If we insist on filling ourselves to overflowing, day after day and into the night, then there is no room for God to add anything to us -- we are overstuffed already. Knowing of our need for emptiness, we'll begin to throw things overboard indiscriminately, and we might even ditch some things we really need, just because we can't hold onto them any more.

Ah. Make a list -- not a to-do list, but a list of needs and longings. What must stay? What can go? What is someone else's idea of importance and not yours? What squats in your life out of a soulless duty, and what grows like a sweet green plant?

Soon it will be time to rake the dead leaves away from the garden and see what's there. Some things have begun to grow. Some are dead and I can safely pull them up and throw them away.

And I have some new things to put in. They just arrived in the mail.
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