Alive!

Me at Devils Lake, 2015, courtesy of Kay

Someone to hold you too close. Someone to hurt you too deep.

Someone to sit in your chair, to ruin your sleep

Someone to need you too much. Someone to know you too well.

Someone to pull you up short, and put you through hell

Someone you have to let in, someone whose feelings you spare,

Someone who, like it or not, will want you to share a little, a lot.

Someone to crowd you with love. Someone to force you to care.

Someone to make you come through, who'll always be there,

As frightened as you, of being alive, being alive. Being alive.

Being alive!

(Stephen Sondheim, “Being Alive” from Company. Here’s Raúl Esparza’s performance.)

January is speeding by. With each ticking of the cuckoo clock on the wall behind me, we draw closer to February. I might wish that I could have known – like those in a far distant past – life without a calendar always marking what hasn’t been done or can’t be undone.

Life lived or life ignored, times passes. Days and years pass. I might say this is “all we have,” yet the phrase implies a scarcity that doesn’t exist, for “this all we have” is quite a lot. “This” is abundance. “This” is today, and today can be replete with good things if we will only permit it. The blood that seeped from my knuckle this morning after I snipped it along with some of my hair is life – good and full of promise. This afternoon’s painful finger will remind me that I am alive, that as long as I can feel pain, hunger, or lack of sleep there is life yet to be lived.

Being alive is THE WHOLE POINT. It means I have more opportunities to laugh with friends and to feel the sun’s warmth, the wind’s bite. Alive, I have a chance to help at Harbor House and to polish that Chopin waltz. It means I may yet share love with someone who – like me – appreciates the wonder and possibilities of being alive.

So when I’m feeling stuffy this week because of allergies, I’ll celebrate this proof that I’m alive. When soundtracks try to play on my Celtic station or rodents eat at treasured garden plants, I will work at rejoicing that I’m alive. And when in days of grief I find myself both crying and feeling joy, I hope I’ll remember that grief and joy can coexist, that they are both part of a life lived in love.

I’ll try to see whatever comes my way as invitations to live more fully. And I’ll make a practice (again) of asking myself whether or not what I’m doing will matter next week, next year.

Jesus told parables, example-stories, about this very thing.

A woman found a gem in a shop. She saw it and knew that this was perfectly hers, if only she would accept the cost. So she went out in joy and sold everything she possessed so that she might claim it. Matthew 13:44-46

He wasn’t speaking of some heaven way out there someday, but of living the life of justice, compassion, and relationship that God intends for each of us – in the here and now. We need to claim that life which is already ours. It doesn’t just happen. We may see hints of our true selves reflected in others. We may stumble onto pieces we'd never noticed. When this happens, we have to accept and welcome them. Make room for them in our being. And to do this, we have to be willing to give up those parts that aren’t leading us to deeper, broader, fuller lives. That’s the hard part. But to be who we are meant to be, this is the path.

God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no...
Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and
eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.
~ Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self