LIFELONG LEARNING

Lifelong learning, including about ourselves, is just that. Here's what I learned this year.  It may not be too much different from what you learned or knew already.  I learned that almost every day, every week now, passes too quickly.  Even as I work to live slowly and in the present, my week jumps from beginning to end.   

I learned that even with sadnesses and disappointments, time can be almost idyllic, almost just exactly what anyone would want.  Because over the years, we learn to cope with sadness and disappointment.  They become less devastating.  We integrate missing someone, or worrying about someone, or even forgetting someone, into our lives.  Somehow no matter what personal trauma is in the background of my heart, I can still have a perfectly wonderful day.  I expect it is the same for you.  We recognize that our life is imperfect because everyone's is.  Imperfection is human.  So is yearning and so, thankfully, is accepting.  So is finding goodness in the smallest of things.  

I learned that good and evil, pain and joy, love and death can exist simultaneously, in the same moment, the same heart.  In 1859 in The Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . . " Now is not 1794 and the invasions of Ukraine and Gaza are not the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.  But sometimes it feels like we live in the worst of times.  You know the litany:  too many school shootings, too many guns, too many invasions, too many hostages, too many terrorists, too many dead Gazans who did not declare war on or invade anyone.  And then outside the political realm, too many deaths from drugs and addiction; too much hunger and poverty; too much cancer. 

But Christmas and New Year's were good. Even after someone dies, the first Holy Day brings us back to our faith.  These first weeks in January have been just right. Many people do more than I, many less and as we age, we lean toward less.  Some year I may be a person living in a retirement community with a new pet to claim Mr. Wiggles' spot.  

We adjust.  We never lose hope.  Politics, injustice, poor health--we never give up and we never stop trying.  We know that we are in this together. With our friends, we are in it to the end, side by side, facing the unknown.  If we're the one on chemo, someone brings food or sits with us.  If we're not, we try to practice a ministry of presence.  We pray.  It's the least we can do.   

So, it is not the worst of times.  Neither is it the best.  It is simply our time.  The suffragettes marched for the vote.  The civil rights workers marched for justice.  Tyranny and dictators and would-be dictators and insurrectionists have been defeated before. Trump lost in 2016 and, God willing, will be thwarted again. And as we work for good in whatever ways we can, we enjoy our days whether brief or long, we learn to know ourselves better, grow stronger in our faith, and take time for simple pleasures. 

Here's one:  tonight look at the stars.  Then say a prayer and have a quiet rest. 

                               In peace, Nina Naomi