Burn out
Burnout comes not primarily from doing too much, but from doing what we don't really want to do – so that one foot is moving forward and the other foot is trying to run away."
Dennis Linn – Sleeping with Bread, p.13
I likethis interesting quote. I don't think it's always true – sometimes you can burn out from doing one thing you love, but to excess, and without the balance of other things. (Although I suppose then you can start to hate it!) But it is true that if everything is duty and not joy, your soul does shrink up. Everyone's life needs in it a thread of something that brings pure joy.
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Lovely writing
I sit and read
the anguished edit of
remembered hurt
and wonder if my ex
also sat transfixed
by ’shenandoah’
Did they breath in the
freedom of the split from me?
They did
and there’s nothing now
that I can do
to repair the fractures
that I caused
I didn’t mean…
I never knew…
I tried so hard…
for every freedom
there’s a pained regret
held with in the heart
of another
and all I’m left with
is grace
That’ll do, I guess, that’ll do.