Some weeks offer such a surfeit of stimulation, no single matter will settle down for sustained reflection. Or for writing a blog post about.

There was the fine Brian McLaren lecture at Canadian Mennonite University, on “perplexity.” There was a wonderful evening as guest of a book club, discussing This Hidden Thing. There were three fascinating, draining days with friends at the trial of Mark Edward Grant, charged with the murder of Candace Derksen. Then a wrenching play, “The December Man,” at Prairie Theatre Exchange. The next night it was Saint Augustine’s Confessions at the “Take and Read” series. And Egypt, running as a stream of hopes and fears throughout all of these days — in addition to the usual work of the household, my current writing project, and my mother’s move.

So the point of listing these? Not to impress, I hope, as if my life is particularly busy or varied or interesting. Not necessarily as an excuse, either, though that might be closer to the point. The question I’m mulling, as I’m trying to honor the regular discipline of this blog, and struggling to focus is: how do we give what we experience its due? When there’s so much? When everything swarms and nothing stops? How do we integrate one day or event with the next? How do we choose, we who are eager for experience but too small in mind and heart and time to process everything well? Is it enough to be in the moment, as they say, and leave it at that?

While drying my hair Sunday morning, I read the day’s lectionary texts, one each from Deuteronomy, Psalms, Matthew and I Corinthians, and they too, each one rich on its own, gave way to the next. And then at the end, they sat there, jostling as it were, and they wouldn’t come together either as something that might be called “a word for the day.”

I don’t want my experiences, whether at a play, in a book, in a courtroom, or in the news, to be simply a series of curiosities, of “entertainments.” But, for now, the past days are lined up, like the Lectionary texts, gone through once but insufficiently probed. For now I acknowledge them gratefully. I’m asking the Spirit to pull forward and merge what’s required. And I’m hoping that the next week will be a little duller.

Saturday, while sorting and boxing things in my mother’s apartment (because she’s moving into a personal care home), I came across a bag of my late father’s appointment calendars. They’re of the pocket-size type, allowing just a square or a few lines of writing per day.

Neither one of my parents are/were diarists. My father, however, was introverted, meticulous, a good writer, and he might have been, I think, in other times. But he was very busy. I suspect, in addition, he would have felt it unseemly, as a Christian, to linger over his, or others’, doings, failures, triumphs. Introspection could be a trap in the world we’re “passing through.” But the inclination was there, even if he didn’t indulge it, and here it was, peeking out of his tiny notes in these calendars.

I couldn’t stop to read; I was sorting and boxing. But I had this moment of connection with him: In this, we’re a lot alike! Unlike him, I’ve indulged, and have many more words in notebooks by now than he ever did, but really, that’s just numbers.

Then I noticed that it was mostly the first month or two that Dad had crammed with notes, while the rest of the year was sparsely filled or blank. I smiled; I recognized this pattern too. I journal year round, but how faithfully and fully I write as the new year opens, and how many days pass unrecorded by year’s end! If I would ever write a memoir based on my journals (I’m speaking hypothetically) I’d have to call it My Life as I Lived It in January (and Part of February). That’s where all the detail is.

In the middle of the somewhat melancholy task of reducing my mother’s physical world, this connection with my dad, as trivial as it may sound, was a gift. Me too! and Oh, yes, I understand! are always a gift, but especially when they cross the generations.