Gratitude

As Spring Break draws to a sunny, windy close, the guys lying around in front of video games, snacking on miscellany, I'm weaving toward and away from the table laden with ideas belonging to so many people I love and am somewhat responsible for.  The part I hate about grading is not the encouragement and guidance part - it is assigning a grade to someone's thoughts (or lack thereof).  I can never get over that.  The great joy is having students write or come by to see me who have gone off to college, out into the world, and want to share something of their insights or changes.

Though nothing much has happened to me of import, I feel better, more alive, than ever in my life.  I gave up alcohol and shopping for Lent, realizing both can easily be stuffed in the space better left open that lies within me.  What has happened is, with this sobriety, I see my and other people's behavior in a new light.  I see how many things we use to distract ourselves from the fact that what is here, who we are, is all there is.  There isn't some place we're eventually arriving, there isn't some celebrity coming some day to knock on our doors and save us from boredom or aging, there is just us and our lives, right here and now.  I am the only one who can make my life worth living.  Much of that making has to do with my attitude toward the everyday - how I spend my everyday.  If my daily life is cluttered with people who are bored and looking for distraction, I find myself bored and looking for distraction.  If my daily life is viewed as a gift and I am surrounding myself with those who are actually living, doing things to help others and creating, who are awake and unmedicated, who cry when they need to and laugh when they feel it and deal with their humanness, I am awake and grateful for the pain and the difficulty and the joy and the confusion all at once.  I no longer need parenting or saving beyond what I am empowered and inspired to do myself.  I do need friends, guides, those who give me a reason to keep going, the surprising and perennial grace of God.  But I no longer feel the need to escape my life, no longer desire to be someone else in some other circumstances.  And I'm not sure there is a greater joy than the relief of putting down the burden that has plagued me all my life.

Shalom.