Askesis (n) a place of confinement without which there can be no energy or purpose*

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is the power to choose your response.**
Viktor Frankl

We expand the space between
stimulus and response through
humility (who I am, not who I am not) and
gratitude (open to all I have, though may not own) and
faithfulness (small offering of who I am and what I have) –
These are my discoveries in
the twenty eight or so years following the provision of
my first askesis, wherein
I faced my shortcomings, but also
the deeper longings for my life;
I realise that I have since fashioned a daily confinement
in which I seek to embrace energy and purpose –
The hope being to emerge with
integrity (a connectedness to all and everything), with
wholeness (enoughness rather than completeness) and
perseverance (to complete whatever the distance is before me).

It’s not so much a place of magic, but,
I hope,
Centring and grounding.

*A definition from Eugene Peterson’s Under the Unpredictable Plant;
**Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.