Every thing in life is significant.
Being human is divinely inspired.
If you wish to love God, then love the people around you.
If you wish to worship God, then be fully present in your own life.
There. Those are my loosey-goosey, New Agey bits of profundity that I have gathered since my last post.
And yes, I still believe the Son of God came to earth, was born human while remaining fully Divine, was crucified for my sins, went down to the gates of hell, shook death loose and rose bodily on the third day, eventually ascending to God, and now lives in me, so that my life is His life.
I also like to believe that God literally created the entire world by simply speaking the words, and that He did it in six days and that it pleases Him. I like to believe this because it's beautiful, because it speaks to the power of words and because I think God doesn't like to live in the logical all the time.
Oh gosh. I just put a blank CD in the player and now suddenly the dining room is full of the resonant, melancholy sound of a fiddle and just as suddenly I'm back in the Rockies in the late afternoon and the sun is long and amber across the meadow grass and glinting in my eyes and I'm hot and dusty after a long ride, drinking stale Dr. Pepper from earlier in the morning. The air is clear and we are going home, pouring back down the mountain to join the stream of people from 1-70 to 1-25, towards the smell of dinner cooking and the sky full of evening light.
My parents were searching through boxes of my stuff last week, in the hopes my documents were there. They didn't find them, but they did find Ferdinand the Bull. Dear Ferdinand, rubbed red velvet, staunchly set hind legs, purposeful shoulders and little cloth horns which flopped over, for years traded back and forth between my youngest brother and I.
"Oh, oh, go give it to Jesse!" I cried.
I love being alive. I'm cleaning the counters and I rejoice in the smell of Fantastic and the slick shine of the surface. I love the limpid golden dark in the eyes of my dog, her little doggy soul given so freely to me, the elegance of her spine and the thick nap of fur between her little ears. So fearfully and wonderfully made.
And then I lose my temper at them in the night, when Lynn doesn't let Abby back on the bed and they create a major ruckus. And then I get embarrassed because I have lost my temper at the dogs in the presence of God. But then I just offer all of it up, because all of it is what's real in that moment and He wants what is real.
There's no use waiting for the next life to be fully alive. It's a complete waste of this one, and He gave us this one. I'm grateful for every piece of life I've already lived; the taste of lake water in my mouth, the soles of my feet flying white across the grass, the blur of falling snow caught in the lamp light, the bus rounding the corner cumbersomely, its flat impassive face blinking a somber warning, the creak of the doors being folded back and the smell of the green plastic seats.
I get lost in my childhood lately. But I'm not just grateful for that, for the deep green heart that I grew up in, the paths in the woods that I knew and playing with my Barbies in the waterfall from the culvert that crossed under the road, popcorn and Cool-Aid sleepovers, family picnics in the pine woods, the branches high above swaying in the wind, a wiffleball, Ruffles potato chips and Tootsie Roll Pops.
It's not just that, it's going to Tony Clamato's in my first little black dress, sleeveless with a square neck, having fillet Mignon with a mushroom port sauce and later, outside on the square and my ex husband smoking a cigar, his white shirt glowing in the lamp lights, arrogant and happy for that one moment and I'm not yet twenty years old and I have no idea how beautiful I am.
It's the sound of CCR, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Kahlua on ice, necklaces of sterling silver on black lacing, driving to my first real job in my first car, a deep pink Chevy Cavalier with all the windows down, driving back from the lake soaking wet, barefoot, drunk on the air, living in despair each and every day within that marriage, knowing I've destroyed my whole life and sucking on the rinds for any savor it could give me.
And later, meeting at the Thai place that we loved to separate the wedding gifts, most of which hadn't even been taken out of the boxes and then much later driving down to the Boston Museum of Science in the pouring rain, with Pe Noi, who asked me out at the restaurant. Red curry sauce, Thai ice tea sweating in the glass, his bedroom with the mismatching curtains from Walmart that I had put up, China town and steaming dumplings on trolleys, his heavy gold watch and out last trip up into Vermont that summer, and I'm only twenty two years old.
Twenty two and I have my first apartment with a friend for room mate and I work with my hands upholstering cornices and seat covers in a basement in Manchester. I'm tanned and arrogant with my body's strength, finally owning my own innate sensuality, divorced, barefoot, own one pair of jeans and my father's old woolen sweater. I'm ridiculously in love with a young Japanese man of twenty five whom I'd met through the Internet that summer. David Grey's "Forgive Me" and Coldplay's "Yellow" play on the radio and the towers go down that fall; all the cars have their heads lights on, an unbroken steam of light down the highways.
All of it. I'm incredibly grateful for having lived all of it. The best part is that now I'm here. My husband is coming home for lunch and he's long legged and blue eyed and passionately in love with me and we stay up hours at night keeping each other awake talking and if I could dissolve into his delicious, freckled skin for just a moment I would.
It's the last week of May in Kentucky and everything around me is drenched in green, out on the golf course retirees in shabby shorts putter around in their carts under the hot sun. Strawberries are a dollar eight five a carton, the air is filled with the delicious honey suckle smell and inside we need the AC on all the time, my sewing project piled on the ironing board, shoping list on the fridge, walking shoes by the door, certified copies of documents coming to me by mail all the way from the NH courts, blogging almost done; all this is my life.
I love it.
