These days I am thinking about two fields. On these fields,

I learnt how to play rugby

Scrumming and practicing for hours

I scored my first try to the absolute delight of my dad. I can still remember the exact place I scored on these fields

We played any and all sports involving all shapes of balls

I had my first fistfight

I won and lost while playing marbles

I learnt about sex and cuss words during the informal conversations during break time

I noticed girls for the first time

I played and sat in the sun on winter days

On these fields I lived into slow steps towards maturity.

I am taking my daily walks on these two fields at the primary school I attended in the early 1980’s. Tayla is now in the same school and when we pick her up I exercise my heart around these two fields that have captured such a huge part of my childhood imagination.

These fields bring back hundreds of memories. Today as I walked around these fields I imagined myself as a primary school child hearing that I would have a heart attack and triple bypass surgery at the age of thirty-five. I know that I would find it impossible. Incredulous.

These days I am recovering a Christian practice I have lost during the last decade. As a fresh convert I can still remember reading through the book of James for the first time. In Chapter 4:

13-15 James states that,

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

I still remember writing in the margins DV. Deo Volente. God willing. In those days I knew that there was more to life than my designs and plans.

These days I am much more aware of my arrogance in thinking that my will is all there is to life. Earlier today a friend asked me about a speaking engagement I have overseas in 2012. He asked me when I was going. I responded, “In 2012” and then after a pause I said ….”God willing”. I am relearning and learning. Walking around these fields I take small steps