There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio:
What is sacred?
Of what is the spirit made?
What is worth living for?
What is worth dying for?
The answer to each is the same:
Only Love....
- as performed by the artist, actor and enlightened spiritual being Johnny Depp
(and as adapted from Don Juan by English poet and Romantic Movement eminence Lord Byron)
For some time now, I've been intending to return to my blogging: I did it a few times a few years ago and enjoyed it, but, as so often happens in modern adult mid-life, the real world reasserted itself and redirected my attention to other supposedly more important and certainly more urgent things. So it's taken years, but I'm back....
Or at least I intend to be. And that's the point: the commitment to live the life that we want is ever a struggle, so at this point what I mean is that I hope to create posts that are meaningful meditations for me and for anyone else who chooses to read them. In so doing, I hope to create a catalogue of sorts, what in effect will be a cornucopia of the ideas and issues, from the mundane to the profound, that have impacted my life and others' lives along our individual and collective paths. And somewhere in this catalogue I hope that there is meaning, insight and benefit. I find that when I write it helps me to put things/life in better perspective ... so I hope that my perspective-taking and -making is also beneficial to others who may choose to accompany me on these mini-journeys (which, strung together, are reflective and constitutive of the ultimate journey of earthly life...).
As I reflect on the intervening years since I last posted a blog I'm both amazed and appalled. Simply put, this has been one of the most challenging periods in my life both personally and professionally. I have struggled - sometimes valiantly, sometimes pointlessly - and persevered and triumphed and failed and broken through and regressed and ... well, lived. No, frankly, I didn't want this life that I've had in the past five years ... but I'm thankful for it and, now, for the gift of every day (which is a perspective of which I was far less appreciative those several years ago). There's the old wisdom that God doesn't give you anything that He/She/It knows you can't handle and I've lived this in the past few years. And yet, appreciatively and humbly, I offer the following (which, hopefully not too immodestly, I call "The Booker Corollary"): after all of the trials, tribulations and turmoil, I wish the Good Lord didn't have so much faith in me.... :-)
And yet He/She/It does, because amidst the trial and tribulation there have been moments of stunning, profound and eternal beauty ... and these are what I appreciate most about my journey in life. In every "little moment" there is something meaningful ... if nothing else the appreciation of the true gift of the moment itself. And yet I have been blessed immeasurably, unexpectedly and undeservedly ... and for this I thank the Spirit who guides me and gives me Life....
I have seen my children grow from playful, joyful kids into complex, considerate and caring young adults. I have loved and lost and found a new love that is transcendent and humbling in its beauty, profundity and ease. I have rediscovered family and a small(er) coterie of friends who have been supportive and patient and kind and loving. And I have been forced to choose in response to myriad provocative circumstances: and out of this pain I have chosen its opposite, to focus on, appreciate and pay forward the love, beauty and grace that I have also received. In sum, I have chosen to try hard to rid myself of negativity, ugliness and hurt so that I can receive, appreciate and reflect positivity, beauty and healing, inspiring and transformative Love....
Or at least I try to live in this way everyday. Some days I'm better at it than others ... but almost all days I'm far better at it than I used to be. I see and appreciate the beauty in everything now. And even though life isn't a proverbial bed of roses all of the time (or, often, even that much of the time), I am thankful for the now well-honed ability to rise above the thorns and to celebrate the joy of the gift of Life. I am so thankful for the awareness that I could have chosen to become embittered by my oft-challenging circumstances of late ... and even more grateful for the love, encouragement and wisdom of both my past and present that has led me to seek ever more ardently the good and to share this "wastefully" (to borrow Bishop John Shelby Spong's apt and incisive term).
Life is hard ... both in the sense in which M. Scott Peck originally meant it in his signature work The Road Less Traveled and also in the sense that it's harder than we expect. And yet it's also immeasurably and unimaginably beautiful and inspiring and profound and silly and light and meaningful and breathtaking and fun and joyful and wonder-filled and wonderful. That is, if we choose to open ourselves to it fully....
And so in this spirit - of making the effort to open myself fully to this Life with which I have been gifted and to share this gift with those of good will and loved ones who have chosen to make this journey with me - I begin by thanking you all for touching my life in so many indescribable yet enriching ways and pray that these offerings return this Gift of Spirit to you and pay it forward to others who will join us along the way.
In closing, to borrow again from Bishop Spong, I wish for you what I seek for myself: to experience eternity here and now by living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I/we can be...
All the best,
WKB
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