in saecula
Been a while, hasn't it?
The winter weather has got me feeling pensive. The last few months have had many ups and downs, and some epic action in my immediate vicinity. People have come into my life, some leaving just as quickly, and in the churning, I've been having small reckonings with myself. The liberation of my energies from my eternal cycle of burnings, growings, breakings, and healings, has resulted in revelatory internal silence. And like finally cleaning a back room, only to realize at the end that the uncovered carpet is in dire need of replacement, my attentions are turning towards what I need to get done, and what I can't believe I let myself get away with.
This is all good, albeit not terribly comfortable. And the more action I take -- and I am already taking some -- the more good in these reckonings I see.
Meanwhile, things go. My brother is in his next chapter of life at St. John's and plowing through the growing pains that entails. My niece, at 3 months, has two teeth and stands well as long as she has our thumbs to balance on. My sister and her husband hit their first anniversary today. My youngest brother will be playing varsity football in the Virgina Tech stadium on Saturday at the state championships.
I have been eating clean, more or less, and the more I do it the better I feel. At my longest unbroken stretch, I literally tingled with energy and lightness while sitting at my desk, all day. It has uncovered a shocking love of cooking in me, which I have put to great use.
I took a break from riding and restart this week, thank goodness. I've found a few people interested in getting back into Bikram yoga with me, which I've always thought was particularly fun in cold weather.
I came home from Thanksgiving at midnight on Saturday, to find two of my guy friends (another TerraMar guide and my friend Katie's boyfriend) on my couch in their underwear with neckties and sunglasses, watching a movie, with four empty 40's of Budweiser, pretending to be shocked that I was home so early. I just about died laughing, took pictures, lit candles, and then we called Katie over and the four of us did shots until 2am.
I'm in a place where I have family that draws me home and the means to go there, passions that sate my thirsts and the means to invest in them, and friends who miss me enough to prank me hysterically upon my return and take me to task when I don't call often enough. I have the Sacraments within reach, a secure job that pushes me, and not a day goes by that I do not feel loved and that I do not burst out laughing.
I could never deserve what I have. And it's real, gelled understanding of that truth that motivates me. When others lift you higher, the only real way to show your gratitude is to reach up. For some reason, events these past few months have transpired together to drive some points home, a few of them repeatedly. I'm being hit over the head with my own bad habits and their consequences. And even that makes me feel grateful.
I really am feeling pensive, aren't I? It's just that sometimes, stepping back and counting my blessings hits me hard. For all the shit and all the pain and all the screwing up, it is shocking how much real goodness has flooded my life. And though my thoughts are now turning to the myriad ways in which I've shown myself to be undeserving of it, I'm going to go ahead and leave those alone. The difference between gifts and earnings is that you do nothing to deserve the gift. So the point is moot.
It's Thanksgiving and soon Christmas, with so much focus on blessings and what we are given. It's the preparatory new year of Advent. It's the end of 2008. And I have a hard time enunciating how burningly grateful I am for all of this.
So, hey, while I have your attention: Thanks. Thanks for being part of that flood. Thanks for being more than I could deserve. As you lift me higher, I'm reaching up. As I lift you higher, I hope you do the same.
