112. That Kind of Time
I love Anne Lamott’s books and I recently was reminded of a story in one of Traveling Mercies. She wrote about going shopping with her friend Pammy who was in a wheelchair and struggling with cancer. Anne was looking for a dress and came out of the dressing room asking Pammy if the dress made her look too big in the hips. Pammy said, “You know Anne—you just don’t have that kind of time.”
What stirred this story up in me was listening last week to a man who has taught the last year in Iraq, and he has built an orphanage in Mozambique, and he talks of war and peace, and orphans and children starving. He told of churches who argue about the color of the carpet in the sanctuary, or whether the minister wears a robe. I’ve been in a church where people got upset because the preacher didn’t list a title for his sermon each week in the bulletin.
We just don’t have that kind of time.
Remember #92 in these postings which was titled Let It Go #2. I want to repeat the words to the chant I wrote:
Make room for love,
Live life with love,
And when some other enters in
Let go—shake off—strip down,
And breathe in love.
—
© Copyright 2012 by Ann Freeman Price
That’s what we need to with the carpet, or with the pastor’s robe, or the sermon title—let go, shake off, strip down—and breathe in love. We do have that kind of time!
