DEAD LINES

If you are wondering about this photo,

It is a deadline

or, maybe a dead line

since it doesn't seem to be breathing.

Oh Happy Day!

I just sent in a manuscript to Liturgical Press

for my latest book entitled,

ABIDE: keeping vigil with the Word

It is such a wonderful feeling to have the burden of a deadline lifted. Deadline! Now that is a funny word, I've intended to google it to search out its orgin but have not yet done so. What is a deadline anyway? Does it mean that you are dead when you arrive at the due-date because you have worked obsessively? Or, you will be dead if you don't make it on time. Or, perhaps the project will be dead because you are so sick of it or you have over-edited it.


I recently posted a question on my facebook asking, What's a deadline? One of my FB friends suggested it was a line that has stopped breathing. That answer provided me with much meditation material. A line that has stopped breathing is certainly dead. Of course I could call it a time-line or a due-date -- whatever you call it, a deadline has the ability to cause stress, obsession, irritability, panic and anxiety.


In praying about my deadline (and I do pray about such things) I decided that it can take the light out of my life only if I allow it to do this. It can cause me to live DEAD only if I give it permission to do this. At times like this I am always amazed at how I tend to give my power and my life away. I don't have to give my life away but sometimes I do.


Rethinking all this I have decided that a 'deadline' could be called a 'lifeline' -- Schedules are good for me and staying on task is important; however if I allow any project to take the joy out of my life or if it is detrimental to my peace and presence to other people, then it has stopped breathing. If I look at it as a lifeline, I can be aware of the life we are giving each other along the way. I give life to my work-project and it gives life to me. We bless each other!


Here is my Lifeline! Watch it blossom! I am taking a new vow! No longer will I write to publish! I will write for joy! If I publish, that is wonderful; if I don't, that's ok too.

No deadlines; Only lifelines.

I want to know the sweet joy of my work

becoming my 'love made visible'

as the poet, Kahlil Gibran

so beautifully puts it.

LIFE-LINE