You Fill My Bucket!
Evelyn has a new phrase that she made up herself - "you fill my bucket". She explained that it means that when you make someone very happy, you fill their bucket. I think its just lovely that she associates fullness with happiness. Not just any fullness, but a fullness of love - for instance, she told her Nana that she fills her bucket by sitting with her in the rocking chair before bedtime. So according to Evelyn a full bucket comes from a fullness of love and a close relationship. It is very good that one so young should be able to understand this. How shamefully we adults run around trying to fill our "buckets" with anything but our Lord's fullness and love. It is a good thing for us to prepare for the coming Lent; clearing out the rubbish and opening our hearts to the people around us. And if I haven't told you already, my dear blog readers: You fill my bucket!
Comments
How true this is - it also causes me to consider how our adult preoccupation with filling our own buckets sometimes comes at the expense of putting anything into anyone else's bucket.
Thanks (and thanks to Evelyn) for this thought.
"At the same time the Bishop [Nektary] warned the fathers not to fall into pride. When they visited him in San Francisco in 1975 he told them: “Don’t think that anything you have is by your own efforts or merit. It’s a gift of God.” In Optina, his brother Ivan Kontzevitch used to say, the monks walked as if on tiptoes before God. There was some joking and kidding, but no one ever said anything that would disturb their inner quietness and God’s presence among them. As Bishop Nektary explained, “They were treasuring thegrace .” This was perhaps the most important lesson that Bishop Nektary had learned at Optina and therefore he often told the Platina fathers: “Do not spill the grace of God.”...
Spiritual vigilance kept with special strictness during Great Lent was to be maintained during and after Pascha as well. Without the guarding of oneself, there was a tendency to fall into a state of sourness after tasting so much sweetness. One young convert, radiant after experiencing his first Pascha in the wilderness, was asked by Fr. Seraphim: “Well, how did you like the Feast?”
“It was wonderful!” replied the elated pilgrim.
“Don’t waste what you’ve been given,” Fr. Seraphim said, echoing the words of Bishop Nektary. “Don’t spill the grace. Keep it there!” As he said this, Fr. Seraphim tapped the young man’s chest, right on his heart."
- Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood: 2003), pp. 587-588, 600.
HT: This is Life
Very true also. Oh, there are so many ways to fall! I'm going to have a lot struggling in repentance to do this Lent. I hope you all forgive me for throwing my junk in your buckets. Forgive me, a sinner.
-C, thanks for sharing that wonderful thought as that side of things totally escaped me until you pointed it out!
I like that. It is something I'll have to think on for a while, its own bit of sweetness.