I stupidly admitted to my wife recently that I was getting too safe. That I was in danger of harmlessly plodding towards middle age.
That my life had just become a bit dull.
“I used to live dangerously!” I told her.
“Look at me now. I’m in my pyjamas eating Garribaldis on my night off. It’s
only half eight!”
I should have learned by now in our house. There’s some thoughts in my head that should never come out of my mouth.
A few weeks later I was presented with an envelope. The thrill of a lifetime, my wife called it.
The perfect way to avert the onset of mid-life crisis.
Skydiving.
Before I knew it, I was 15,000 feet above an airfield in Lincolnshire, plummeting to earth at a hundred miles an hour, while tightly strapped to a smiley, long-haired Romanian bloke called LuLu.
I thought I was going to die. I hated every terrifying second of it.
I’ve never prayed so hard or screamed so loudly.
Landing back on terra firma, things didn’t seem so drab after all.
The experience has made me appreciate life’s less pulse-racing pleasures.
Given me fresh recognition that so many of us get complacent - lazy even - with our lot.
And yet I believe we all have a daily opportunity to appreciate the wonder and joy in the ordinary things we see and do.
I’m also learning to seek spiritual fulfilment in the humdrum.
Brother Lawrence - a 17th Century French Carmelite monk - was a master at it.
For years dismissed as a clumsy embarrassment, he became a towering Christian figure - by doing nothing more than prayerful pot washing.
Lawrence claimed to have discovered a profound daily connection with Christ while scouring pans in the monastery kitchen.
No big spiritual sky dives for this brother.
“All we have to do is to recognise God as being intimately within us,” he wrote.
Wherever that is. Whatever it is we are doing.
So whether today will involve trimming the hedge, watching the kids at swimming lessons, visiting grandma, or sat in my PJs dunking garribaldis, I will try to turn my ordinary moments into something more beautiful, fulfilling and profound.
If that doesn’t work, I know a fearless skydiver called LuLu who might just be able to help.
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