Everyday Sacred

So I'm reading Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender and although it is certainly a different read than Elephants, I am enjoying it and finding many parts to which I can relate. The book is related to a monk's begging bowl: a small bowl that starts out empty only to be filled with the nourishment needed for life. The intuitive author then tells a story of three bowls. The first is inverted so that it cannot hold anything; anything poured into it flows over its edges. The second is upright but cracked, stained, and filled with debris, anything poured into this bowl will leak out or become polluted. The third is clean and without holes or cracks; it is ready to receive and hold whatever is poured into it.

Sometimes I am the first bowl: turned into myself or my to do list that I don't take time to enjoy or notice, letting the moments just flow around me (but these can be times of great productivity). Sometimes I am the second bowl: broken and run down, exhausted and impatient, leaking and polluted (these are times of little to no productivity, lots of tv and early bedtimes). And sometimes I am the third bowl: alive, awake, appreciative, energized, fully absorbed with my children, living in the moment, allowing my bowl to fully soak up life. This is the bowl I wish I could be all the time, but that would make me a little too perfect, and who really wants that?!