Small Pleasures

(I thought about taking an actual picture of this event to add to the words, but it was too scary... )
I am having "tea".
All by myself at ten in the morning I have made a pot of coconut chi tea, taken out my china teapot and cup and the special silver teaspoon. I have put on a beautiful CD mix and have made cranberry scones and a batch of devonshire cream.

In front of me sits beauty and serenity.

Well, correction, before me sits beauty and serenity in a space on my dinning room table.
Also occupying the surface area was a basket of apples, assorted Lego's, a hairbrush, paper towels, photographs, scattered mail and some Operation Christmas Child boxes making the rest of the table not at all serene!

So why, with all that obviously needed attending to, had I pushed back an area for "a spot of tea" ?

A friend had sent for my birthday some of the things I was using for my personal tea party. In my way of thinking gifts are all about providing a complement or an opportunity to the person you're giving to. So as I'd been given the opportunity for a moment of quiet beauty, I took it.

There will always be something to do.
There will always be more to do than time to do it.

Always.

A wide open space in your schedule will never appear to meet a friend or forgot everything else and play with a child, to close your eyes and get lost in a piece of magnificent music or dance in the kitchen or to stand outside on a fall day and drink it the vibrant colors and cool breeze on your skin and the smell of wood smoke on the air.

The work will be there when you get back to it.

So let me challenge you today to find a moment - ten seconds or ten minutes - to experience some of the pleasures that lie just beyond the reach of an obsessed with "gotta get it all done" mind, and I bet that when you wade back into the fray that you will be refreshed and more effective and clearer minded than before you took this intentional break.

"Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures..." H. Jackson Brown Jr.