Reactions in Microcosm
She was beautiful in appearance,
and had a very lovely face;
she had inherited gold and silver
and cattle and fields, and
she maintained her estate
well and made it flourish.
No one spoke ill of her.
--Book of Judith
For each of us, too, our daily lives are the seedbed for the moments when we are tested.
Being tested does not have to mean huge great problems that we wonder how in the world we are meant to deal with them... but it is what most of us will think about when we are presented with the concept of 'being tested' and I am no different.
And it is my thought just now that in thinking in such a way, we - I - miss those opportunities to recognise other times in which I have been tested and have 'passed' the 'test.' Small moments where there was the opportunity to deal with something in a manner that was full of grace, or to panic and flail and be less than decorous about some small thing that crossed my way.
In missing those things... in missing those moments, I feel I somehow lessen my own engagement with my inner state of grace, and that this is perhaps one of the things that is missing from the peace of my sense of self.
Someone somewhere once said, Don't sweat the small stuff. I had a calendar that was all about that one year - one of those ones that you tear off a page for each day - kind of miss having one of those again - and while we shouldn't sweat it, I most definitely agree - we shouldn't ignore it either.
It's the small stuff that makes all the difference.