Life is too short…

Life is too short to drink cheap wine,

a friend used to say

as he sipped his favorite red wine.

He died young

but enjoyed lots of fine wine

in his short life.

What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver asked.

She, too, knew the how fragile life could be

and the urgency of embracing the moment.

Even if we live for

eighty years or ninety,

is it ever enough?

Is there not one more thing to be done,

one more place to see,

one more goal to accomplish,

one more person to forgive?

Say yes to the invitation,

accept change,

act on impulses,

be kind and generous,

eat good food and

drink good wine.

Live each day as if it were your last.

My wild and precious life

We recently celebrated my mother’s ninety-third birthday. Her mother lived to be ninety-six and one of her brothers died a week shy of his ninety-eighth birthday. We have longevity in my family.

As I pondered my mother’s long life, Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day came to mind. It ends by asking,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

After college, when I went into nonprofit work instead of returning to the FBI, my mother was not happy. For eight years, she had been able to say, “My daughter is a secretary in the FBI,” and people understood what that meant. She had been looking forward to saying, “My daughter is an FBI agent,” but that did not happen.

Instead, I got a job recruiting advocates for people who have developmental disabilities. My mother had no idea what that meant. My work defied easy explanation, and she could not imagine how I spent my days. She was baffled.

“Where did you ever get the idea to go into that kind of work?” she asked.

I told her that she had given me the idea by the way she lived.

My mother always made room for one more. When my unmarried uncle got cancer, he moved in with us, and my mother took care of him. When my grandmother needed a place to live after my grandfather died, my mother welcomed her into our home.

She showed me how to greet new neighbors with a prepared meal and to comfort someone in pain by being present and listening. She always has extra food prepared because no one leaves her house empty-handed. “What can I give you?” she asked as I left her house on her birthday.

That is the thing about parenting—so much of it is in the doing rather than the telling. I learned by watching.

When a friend of mine was having twins one summer, I offered to come help harvest her garden. For three days, I picked beans and tomatoes and then canned—quarts upon quarts of veggies to get her family through the winter. Toward the end of my visit, she told me she had been resistant to my coming because others had come offering to help, but they just ended up being more work for her. “You have helped me so much,” she said with gratitude and also a note of incredulity in her voice.

“You don’t know my mother,” I responded, because my mother’s example and her voice in my head would not allow me to be a burden. If you can’t help, stay home, would be my mother’s advice.

When I imagine myself at ninety-three, I hope I can look back and see that I have lived my one wild and precious life with integrity and meaning, helping more than hindering, giving more than I have taken.

Every morning, I pray the Prayer of St. Francis. That is the life I want to live.

Living intentionally

This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good.

What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place I have traded for it.

I want it to be gain not loss, good not evil, success, not failure in order that I shall not forget the price I paid for it.   Paul “Bear” Bryant

I found this piece when I was sorting through my friend Jim’s papers. Like Bear Bryant, I want to pay attention to how I am spending my days, to live each day conscious of what that something is that I am leaving at the end of the day.

When I ask myself what a successful day looks like, I think of how open I was to God. Was I of service to someone? Was I loving, compassionate and forgiving? Did I pay attention to the gifts God offered me throughout the day? Did I say yes more than I said no?

I begin my day letting the dog out and stepping outside with her. I like to look up to see the stars and listen for the sounds of nature.

At this time of year, the crickets are full-throated, and I love to listen to their morning song. Do they only sing in the morning? I wonder, or is there so much other noise during the day that I do not hear them?

Mary Oliver wrote in The Summer Day,

…Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

The grasshoppers in my yard are abundant and very large this year. The other day, I watched one sitting on a zinnia.

When I can tune into the seemingly smallest things happening in nature, I can then be more open to notice the nuances of relationships, of people who are in need of a kind word or some assistance. I can slow down, listen, look and appreciate every day.

The Summer Day ends with a question:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

I want to live my one wild and precious life intentionally, noticing the little things that happen around me, attentive to God and the abundant gifts God offers me every day. Only then can I hope to use each day for the good God desires. Only then do I know that I am trading my day for gain, good and success.

 

 

 

Faith in times of trouble

This week, I went to a child’s funeral. She had been born three months premature and had a host of physical ailments throughout her short life. Her parents spoke of her struggles and her strength. They talked of how she brought them closer together and the lessons they learned from her. Her father pointed out that she only lived 524 days, but they seemed to be days filled with meaning and life lessons for her family.

The words of Mary Oliver’s poem A Summer Day popped into my mind:

“… Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Looking around at the people gathered in that church, watching hands wiping away tears, young and old, men and women, I wondered who will be changed by this event. Who will allow the vulnerability of this moment to stay with them over the next hours, days, weeks? Who will sit with the questions death raises? The whys and what would could have been questions. Who will rethink the paths they are following and make course corrections? Who will allow the sorrow of these young parents to affect them, not just for today but for the foreseeable future and beyond?

Will I?

Sitting in that church, listening to the pastor talk about the resurrection hope of this Easter season, I thought about life and death and faith—especially faith during times of trouble.

I sometimes wonder how people who have no faith cope with the tragedies that life brings. I wonder how they make sense of a baby born too early and dying so young.

Because of my faith, I hope for a life beyond this one.

Faith enables me to picture this baby move beyond the pains she endured in her short life into a new life. I can imagine her surprise at being enveloped in light and being totally free. What joy! What bliss!

Abstraction is not something I am particularly good at, so I don’t have a clear image of what heaven looks like, but I don’t need it. I have faith that there is a heaven and that life is not ended with death, but that it is changed into something unimaginably more fantastic.

I will continue to think of this young family who lost their daughter. I cannot imagine the depth of their sorrow, but I can imagine a supportive community of faith believing with them that their daughter was a gift to them for the time they had her and that she continues to live through them. St. John Chrysostom wrote, “Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are.”

I will hold this family in prayer and hope that the lessons they learned from their daughter will continue to shape their lives for many years to come.

Faith teaches me that all in life is gift, including life itself.