I think this post has been ruminating in my subconscious for a while now - certainly since my sermon John 10:10 that ended up interpretting Jesus' words as "I am come that you might be fully alive."  As with all the best sermons, it was one the preacher needed to hear as much as, if not more than, anyone else. If Jesus comes to make us fully alive, how come we spend somuch of our lives drifting along with the same old, same old - even those of us who have had the wake-up call of facing our own mortality and had the complacency of certainty taken from us?

The person leading intercessions that Sunday used the word 'mortal' in a creative and thoughtful way - the consequence of defining ourselves as people who will die, who are, infact, always dying, beofre suggesting that maybe we would benefit from describing, or defining, ourselves as 'natals' as people who are born, or maybe (though I don't recall them saying this) being born (certainly this would fit with the Johanine 'born from above/again' language).  This has been swirling in my subconscious for a while, and then slowly I realised that there might be a missing word: 'vital' - we could (should?) refer to ourselves as vitals, as people who live, who are living.

Or maybe it's all three - we are mortal, we are natal, we are vital...

Our lives are shaped by a complex blend of our mortality, our natality and our vitality.

As I continue to respond to my own sermon, as I seek to reconnect with those habits, rhythms and activities that energise me, I think it is helpful to recognise the inevitable interplay of these aspects of 'life in all its fullness'... letting go of what needs to die, opening myself to what is being born, and in all of it seeking what is vital.  Ah the delight of ambiguous words - vital as in needful, vital as essential, vital as life.

So, vitality - the activity of living; this is what Jesus offered - and, as the saying goes, "in spades"