Contemplative

St. Johns Tomb, Ephesus

I have a friend who is 'off the scale' when they do tests about people being active, as opposed to those who, I suppose like me, are more contemplative. Not that my friend never has deep thoughts (far from it) - and actually, honestly, I do manage to get some things done.

Leanne Payne talks about people who seem always to be 'pregnant with book' - I think meaning that they have more creative ideas than that they seem to actually be able to bring to birth - that remain often half-developed, unformed, not quite complete in the words, ideas, chapters - the whole blessed book - actually getting to be written down, finished.

It is, perhaps, the 'feminine' aspects of our lives, our beings, that are creative in this way, while it takes the more 'masculine' to actually get the book finished - polished, taken to the editor, the publisher, the binder - till it's actually really done.

In the above photo, taken by another friend last November in Turkey, I am standing at the tomb of St. John the Evangelist - the intimate of Jesus, his dear, close friend. I think he was very contemplative. I have a collegue at work - active, impulsive, wonderfully impetuous. He gets things done. He doesn't think about things half as long as I do; he just does it. I envy him sometimes.

While in Ephesus I was moved to share some words I'd memorized from 'the Book we all love' - with those of our tour, visiting from John's Holy Spirited vision, the letter addressed to the 7 Churches of the Revelation:

How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us

that we should be called the children of God
and that is what we are.

The 'world' does not know us because it did not know Him.

Dear friends, now we are the children of God
and it does not ye appear what we shall be . . .
but we know, that when He shall appear,
we shall be like Him
for we shall see Him as He is.

Everyone who has this hope in him (or her)
keeps himself pure.