Life Giver

My children like to play to with my cell phone, taking random pictures and pretending to call China, what child doesn't?  Last week they changed my ring-tone to that wonderful song from the 60's, "It's a gift to be simple, It's a gift to be free, It's a gift to come home where we like to be".  Delight is in the details~


Two weeks ago my drier arrived.  I happily live without a car.  I will not, however, continue to find creative ways of stringing laundry across my kitchen.  This is not Siberia, and I am a posh spoilt American in the end.  Being also a granola loving hippy in the end, I find the lived in mess of daily life so comforting...and the meows of our cat, and long naps, and hot chocolate.  Delight is in the senses~


One week ago today, we were in a major car accident.  Mathias bolted into a very busy intersection without stopping, and it really happened, he was hit by a car going at a very fast speed.  The car swerved, tried to stop, Mathias took the impact on his left side.  That boy, sitting in the ambulance, just kept talking about texting his friends that he really got to see the inside.  He grilled them about every detail he saw, and walked away without so much as a single scratch or bruise!  "Mom", he said, "the angel saved me."  Life Giver Aho!  Every day I wrap them in angelic love.  That day I did it twice for good measure.  Delight is in the big things~~~


As we gather close to each other in the aftermath of, of, of everything, I think repeatedly on a story told often by our sheikh in London.  "There is a traditional Chinese fable that illustrates the need to reverse our ordinary way of thinking and of viewing events.  It tells of how a poor farmer had a horse that ran off into the country of the barbarians.  All his neighbours offered their condolences but the farmer said, 'How do you know that this isn't good fortune?'  A few months later the horse returned bringing with it a barbarian's horse of excellent stock.  All his neighbors offered their congratulations but the farmer said, 'How do you know that this isn't a disaster?'  The two horses bred and soon the farmer had a whole herd of fine horses.  One day when the farmer's son was riding one of them he fell off and broke his hipbone.  All the neighbours offered the farmer their condolences but he said, 'How do you know this isn't good fortune?'  A year later the barbarians invaded the frontier and all the fit young men were called up and most of them died in the war but the farmer's son survived.  Thus good fortune can be disaster and vice-versa.  Who can tell how events will be transformed?  So we can learn to turn around the view we have of almost all the events in our lives."  Delight is in deepest trust and knowing~  It is a delight so deep and normal as to be missed...the sound of a drier, the glow of a radiator, the smell of a starry night holding a new contract on life.  To be a chalice of earth, that is all I desire now.  It contains universes of love.  Aho!


Jacobs, Philip. 2006. Oneself: Life as a Means of Transformation. Winchester: O Books. 111-112.