A Saturday Meditation

This was taken at Nile's basketball game this morning. The weather was cool (50 degrees or so), misty, and foggy. The perfect combination for staying home in bed reading old books and entertaining lofty musings. But here I was in a small, incredibly loud gymn filled with stampeding 11 and 12 year old boys and grown men with whistles. My new personal hell.

Then the brand new baby arrived. So tiny, so pink, so NEW. She was born 5 weeks early and weighed in at a hefty 4 pounds. She was perfect at 5 weeks old. Her birth date was supposed to be Valentines day but she knew better. Her cherubic lips pursed in sleep oblivious of the chaos.

And that took me back to when the kids were born--their little selves all balled up for the first few days; their bodies remembering their confined quarters and slowly realizing they could stretch all the way out, arms and legs flailing; sleeping babies with arms over their heads, hands even with their ears, open mouths.... and now look at them. Forrest is going on 17, is taller than I am, is ready to fledge the family as long as we support him. THERE'S a never ending stuggle!! Niles is having a well rounded puberty with playing basketball, playing percussion in the middle school band, and learing the hard way his mouth really is the source of many of his problems. (I have no idea where he got that!). And then there's Lillie--little Miss Thang. All things girl and she can deliver a punch too. First grade never looked so good.

And then there's the thought that life is so fragile. I don't think you think of that when your their age, but, when you are older and have chosen to deal with death on a pretty regular basis, you think about it frequently. On the whole, I see death as a blessing, a reprieve. A Release. I'm not solid in what I feel about suffering and what exactly constitutes suffering, but I do lean towards the mindset that imperfections are not a blessing. But I've met few humans with physical imperfections so that realm is foreign to me. But the animals I have known with injuries so severe that continue to live in spite of them--not what I would call a blessing. More of a lesson for us to learn when enough is enough. More of a huge neon sign pointing to the action of release. On behalf of that animal. A teaching moment.

And there are plenty of teaching moments to encounter on a daily basis. Just be aware.

So, long meditation short, live your life. Don't just take pictures of pretty things, take pictures of the real things. And embrace them as yours.