Life at the intersection of faith, nature, history and art
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?– Mary Oliver
As I have written previously, this summer I was scheduled to undergo a stem cell transplant to fight what had been diagnosed as myelodysplastic syndrome (see my postings from March 27, April 2 and April 13). This syndrome, which is all too close a cousin of leukemia, was caused by last summer’s chemotherapy treatments for another rare blood disease. Anyway…
Out on the beach today, I saw an old guy sitting in a wheelchair, staring out at the surging ocean. The waves off Daytona Beach were crashing loudly just 50 feet out, but by the time they reached the wheels of his chair they were just harmless bubbles and foam. He sat there for some time, and I wondered what was going through his mind.
Likely, he was wondering how it has all come to this – sitting in a chair and staring at the ocean instead of plunging headlong into the oncoming waves. Perhaps he had been a championship swimmer or a surfer dude in the 1950s. Perhaps he stormed a beach in France and can never shake those gruesome memories. No doubt he saw the hard, fit bodies of the young men and women running and playing around him and remembered his own halcyon days of summer. But I’ll never know what he was thinking because I didn’t ask him. I just saw him as “an old guy in a wheelchair.”
[Read more…] about Want to hear a good story? Listen to your elders…
Last night was the rehearsal dinner for my son’s wedding this Saturday. I had the honor to offer a few words and a toast for them at the gathering for family and the wedding party, and while I was writing the toast earlier in the day, these words by the wonderful writer Annie Dillard came to mind:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
“Again I will build you, and you shall be built.” Jeremiah 31:4
If all goes as planned, sometime this summer I will be rebuilt, remade and renewed when the flow of someone else’s stem cells enters my bloodstream and makes its way, literally, to the marrow of my bones. So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be rebuilt from the metaphorical ground up. And, well, it’s spring and all that.
[Read more…] about A Rebuilding Year: Shooting for Perfection
If we live our lives well (at least this is the way I define “well”) then we live not in numbness and lethargy and apathy, but fully alive and feeling, aware of the sacred around us, and with an ongoing commitment to living an examined life — one centered on the presence of God, the teachings of Christ, and the power of the individual to change the world in some way, however small. And if we live that way, we should often find ourselves standing at metaphorical thresholds and forks in the road wondering which way to move, for there should always be choices to be made. A life lived well should never be lived on autopilot. To me, the worst kind of life would be one where I felt I had no options.
So here I stand on the threshold of so many decisions and life choices, as well as facing some health challenges and life changes over which I have little or no control, at least on the surface. Of course, we all have choices to make, even if the choice is about how we accept those things that have been thrust upon us.
[Read more…] about Standing at thresholds and forks in the road