Fully, wastefully and courageously....

To embrace life, to increase love, to have the courage to be - 

these for me, are the doorways through which I walk

into the mystery of God.

 - Bishop John Shelby Spong, Unbelievable (2018)

It's not supposed to happen like this: no one should have to comfort a young protege on the death of her 34-year old husband. And Bill should have lived a spry, sun-filled life in this house I occupy while on holiday. And Senator McCain should have lived on to fight the good fight, to turn back the terrible tide in a once-grand party ... but, too often for our liking, we come to learn, Life has other, less joyful plans. In other words, sometimes it sucks. As I think of Cristina, Bill and the Senator, I feel sad and am reminded that Providence does not equate to universal good fortune, and that amidst a life of blessings we feel the burdens, too.

Now what?  Simply put, a choice: we can either live on fully - initally, at times, with aching hearts - or be forever wounded by the impersonalities of Fate that our humanity leads us take so personally.  My father taught me that ... but he had to die first for me to learn the lesson.  And, frankly, though he left this earth almost three decades ago, I still would prefer to be ignorant of this reality....

What I remember most about my father's passing was that it was a joyful moment, on the whole: he was no longer suffering and our family gathered to hurt together and cavort merrilly - ah, the stories I could tell! - as if he were still with us in a younger, better form that would stand in complete contrast to his sad earthly end.  And I remember when everyone left to return to their lives and it was just my mother and me left to clean out his closet and figure out what life was supposed to be without him, a state that I had never known and one that she had not experienced for more than four decades.

Life moved on without my Dad in it, as it does and will for each of us.  And the pain of loss will fade as we re-invent our existence to meet the challenge of making the best of whatever it can be ... but more than anything what I have learned is that Life will indeed move on, so we best move as fulfillingly in it as we can while we have it.

We must enjoy our time, because, of course, we don't know how much of it we have and we can't make more of it.  Yes, it's our most precious gift and valuable asset ... and yet for most of it we settle for a life that isn't lived as if this were our last day (even though, one day, it very much will be...).  There is a difference between existence and living ... and, truth be told, as we're raised, we're mainly taught the former - with the goal of doing so as well as we can, of course - but rarely are we pushed to figure out how to live truly, fully and, in essence, eternally in (our) time.

It's this gap that wounds me today, reminding me of the reality that I, too, exist too much and live too little....

For example, this is my first break of the year - I've taken off just a single day prior to my vacation - and I have paid dearly to learn that this was a horrible idea.  Intellectually, of course, I knew that going eight months without a break would be hard, but I rationalized that my company's draconian vacation policy made the gambit worth a try.  I figured that there was a good chance that I would be wrong ... and, of course, I underestimated greatly just how wrong I was likely to be: for the past month I have been merely existing, trying - valiantly, I believe - to keep it together with paper clips and tape until I could get to this respite.

So now I'm here on my too well-earned break and I need the first couple of days to recuperate sufficiently to begin to live again.  It turns out that I'm too old to make these rookie mistakes, and long ago I should have lost this ego-driven presumed toughness ... 'cause, truth be told, I've reached that stage in life where my mortality is showing and these defiant expressions of spirit actually hurt more than they help.  In the game of Life, such unforced errors have no place; now if I were just mature enough to make this choice more consistently....

So this morning, long before the sun makes its appearance, I take advantage of an accident - why did my wife have an alarm set for 4:45am on a Sunday morning?!? - to gift myself with the opportunity to live in a way that's uniquely resonant and meaningful to and for me: to write.  Initially I had intended to read my way out of my grogginess - I'm gonna finish Sapiens if it kills me (figuratively speaking, of course) - but then I made the mistake of glancing at my Facebook feed to pass the time while the (mostly decaf) coffee brewed and there was the sad impetus for my change in course: the notice of a former colleague and now young widow mourning her beloved.

You know, when I was younger, I would empathize with others and allow myself to feel with them to a point ... and now I've reached a stage in life where the hurtful experiences truly wound whether they're mine alone or a loved one's....

And they remind me to make the choice to live fully, love wastefully and be all that I can be, as my beloved spiritual mentor Bishop Jack Spong says.  Indeed: this is what truly living means, to expend one's energy in as constructive, proactive and positively a way as possible and thereby craft a life worthy of the effort.

So my blessings and a prayer of comfort I send to Cristina, a prayer of reverance and gratitude for his service I send to the Senator and his family and a prayer of appreciation I send to Bill and my Dad.  And, today, freshly reminded of this opportunity - to make the choice to exist or live for this one moment in time - I choose gratefully and hope to honor the opportunity with the reverance and reverie that it deserves.

Join me: part of living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I can be means, for me, that I must encourage others to find that unique dimension of their own selves and support them as they do.  I don't know where this will lead us ultimately, but I can say that it will immensely enrich the journey ... and isn't this really the point of Life, to honor this Divine Gift by manifesting it fully?

I don't know the day or hour, but even more than hoping to avoid these (which no one can), I pray that I'll have the courage to live, truly so, and thereby experience eternity in time, or as Paul Tillich described it, the Eternal Now.  In these moments I feel the presence of my Creator and Source and therein am moved beyond mere existence....  

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.

 - Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi