Tabula Rasa

From John Locke's philosophy we get this term - Tabula Rasa - meaning "blank slate". He believed all children were born with a mind that was "unformed and featureless" just waiting for impressions to mold the mind by it's experiences.

But don't worry, this writing isn't about what John Locke thinks. (I saw that glazed look in your eyes...!)

This is about you
It is about your calender.

The one starting in September to be specific.

Many of our lives know September as it's own mini "new year" as school resumes. This means the resumption of sports teams, and car pools, and fundraisers, and piano lessons and homework and...(you already know what's coming don' t you?) And for many others it is the resuming of the full slate of church activities - classes and choirs and fellowship events and ...

I was getting my dry erase calender ready today for the onslaught of activities and was struck by this phrase - this "tabula rasa".

I have on my fridge a blank slate.

Look, there's nothing on it!

Now I know it can't stay that way for long because many things are just a given but I do have the ability to control some of what ends up on that calender.

It will be easy to cover it in things to do.
It will be harder to keep some white space on it.

But I can do that.

And I must.
So must you.

And you can too.

Let's not lose our days in a flurry of activities.

Let's not let the months fly by between now and Christmas in a blur of busyness and a lack of thought or purpose.

There are a lot of ways to do guard your time; like each kid only gets to play one sport, or reserve a date night each week, or open your mail over the trash can or...

But this is not about how to do that.

I'll leave that to the writers of the books and magazines.

This is here just to encourage you that you do leave a little "tabula rasa" space on your own calender!

And appropriately this term has one other meaning which is "A need or an opportunity to start from the beginning." Let's begin again to strive to do mostly what is important and not just what is imperative, and therefore live our lives (or at least our September) a little more intentionally and give ourselves the space we need to think, to play, to love, and to breathe.