We
arrive in this world by circumstance and spend much of our life trying to
reconcile the gift. We endure our
struggles and ascribe our lot with the certainty of burden. Between the jubilation, pain, and occasional humility
we scrape a path that is ours alone. In
the seam of these struggles life offers brilliance: the warmth of late summer’s
sun quenching our shoulders as we gaze across a horizon of promise; the magical
touch of a child’s hand who clasps ours for comfort; the flash of a smile from
a heart who loves ours too. We are
placed here to express a life all our own. Tear away the wrapping, therein lies the gift.
Our choices are many, perhaps too many. Some wring their hands over pearlized ivory or
satin cream, over the eight-place setting or twelve. Some pay others to tell them how to dress,
behave, and raise their children. Some
find decision making an unbearable burden, fearful of those who may judge their
choices as wrong. Still others among us
are addled by success; frozen by a world we herald as great. Those who
understand their gift grant short shrift to such contrivances and lean forward
into tomorrow.
Every morning offers beauty. Every day arrives as a clean slate, if we look
past the indelible erasures. When the
sky is dark, the wind unyielding and the news dire, there is reason to smile. We each possess the promise of greatness: to
thrust our spirit into the light where our gift can shine. The choice is ours, in this moment and every
moment that follows. Look at that person
who stares back at you in the morning mirror and accept your gift. Draw those near who nourish your soul. Let others pass.
This season take a morning walk in the silence of
new-fallen snow; lift a child upon your knee and tell them a story about your
grandfather; sit outside at night until the sky throws a star your way.
Listen.
Love.
Laugh.
Embrace your gift.
Marvelous entry. Just yesterday we watched the sunset over Charleston harbor with my husband's mother. She will turn 89 in 2013. Her beach house is within skimming distance of the shipping channel, where massive cargo and cruise ships silently display life from a distance, embedded in a coastal pink sky with the December sun setting low. The interior contracted personal space centers on the living room windows, with triangular distance from bedroom to kitchen to chair. Even though the contrived world has become more difficult, the natural world is as it always was - morning and evening - and she needs no help in navigating it.
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