Friday, March 13, 2009

The Art of Paying Attention



This is my car on Tuesday afternoon. Yep, I went into the ditch. I was heading along a country road, turned south on a curve and was struck by the beauty of snow on a hill ahead. So thought I'd stop to take a photo. Slowed down using the brake -- not hard -- but the car decided to slide right instead. So there I was in the ditch and I had to laugh -- ending up in a ditch because of a photo (that I never did take)! Since it was about - 22 Celcius, I was lucky folks came along about 30 seconds later.

As I recounted my story, one wise friend pointed out...'if you'd been paying attention..." Well, I was going relatively slow and it was hard to see that ice was below the snow cover but still, her words have come back to me over the course of the week

On Wednesday, I misplaced my keys in the am and then found them, left my purse at a restaurant at lunch time and had to make arrangements to retreive it. Then lost my cell phone and that's definitely gone (but fortunately wasn't too expensive to replace).

The thing is I've been busy and distracted. And things get misplaced. There is the spirituality of paying attention and perhaps needs to be part of my Lenten journey.

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