I’ve been intentionally offline here for a few weeks now. I realized earlier this fall that I hadn’t taken a real break from my daily duties in more than a year. That isn’t surprising given the number of irons in the fire I’ve been watching and the fact that this was a year of significant transition for me as I moved to a new ministry and a new part of the country. Thus I felt I was due for a real break.

What do you do when you take time off? For years – like since I was a young teenager – the answer to that question has been that I’ve curled up somewhere in a chair and just read voraciously. I remember how I used to reward myself at the end of finals or after a major project was finished by putting on some quiet music and picking the top book up off my accumulated pile and plowing through four or five of them in a week. Somehow just entering the fugue state of reading – letting myself be completely absorbed into another person’s thoughts was more refreshing than any other activity I tried.

But it’s been years since I’ve been able to do that. Some of you know that I have a mild form of arthritis. One of the inflammation sites is my shoulders and neck. Over the past ten years or so, the act of sitting still and holding a book so that I could see it and read it for more than an hour or so would mean that I would have to take a couple handfuls of anti-inflamatory meds to keep my regular level of functioning. For some reason reading on a computer screen didn’t bother me as much – I think because I didn’t have to hold anything up while I was reading.

So I am overjoyed to report that my christmas preI’m less concerned about them than I am that it makes reading a joy again for me.)

So I had a pretty great vacation. Thanks Karen for my present. I’ll try to remember to show up for meals.

Grin.