Picnicking

(Somehow, the word "picnicking" doesn't look like a real word when it's written out. Maybe it's the plethora of repeated letters. Hm.)
Anyway, I went picnicking this evening in Washington Park, and I got to swing on the swingset, and I got to climb a wicked-cool tree in which I would have lived as a child, should I have had the choice.
I like picnics. They're so...comfortable. Grass and fresh air and food and conversation and--ideally--a frisbee to toss around (although no frisbee tonight, since Mum so unreasonably wouldn't let me steal the one I found on the ground).
We should all picnic more often. But not too often, maybe, because then we might not enjoy them as much. As Emerson points out, "If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare," yet as it is we seem hardly to notice them. Of course, this human attribute is not necessarily complimentary. There must be some sort of ideal balance, hey, between our "itch to have things over"--wanting to hang onto and repeat and guarantee the repetition of pleasure and security in our lives rather than taking an enjoying things as God grants them--and our boredom with "sameness." Perhaps G.K. Chesterton is right in Orthodoxy, that "grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony." But I like how he continues:
"Grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony, but perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them."
I hope that--by seeking this God--even when I am old I will cultivate the strength to exult in the glorious, nightly, "monotonous" appearance of stars. Not to mention frequent picnics.