We Are Buried With Meaning
On the beauty of passing time and not missing any of it.
Sometimes you wake up, and you’re there. Where you always thought you wouldn’t, couldn’t be. But there you are. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing, a thing that holds itself there in front of you like the dangling crescent on a spring twilight burnt light with orange and indigo.
They say, “Be careful, or life will pass you by.”
But you know, there’s also another option. For life to fill you up. For you to be there for all of it.
And that’s what I woke up feeling a few days ago.
“I’m here,” I thought. “My oldest daughter is graduating.”
And all the life that led up to this point unfolded before me. I don’t have to list it for you, because it’s just for me and my thoughts; it rolls before my inner eye like the scratchy film of a projector from fourth-grade movie days.
She prances before me in the same glory at one as 18. She’s still her and her plus it all. All the days from then till now, all the conversations, all the teary realizations, all the triumphs, the hard lessons, the belly laughs, the midnight snacks, the volleyball games.
Sometimes I want an unreliable narrator to tell me the story of my life and lie to me about the ending so I can live in the crescent indigo light of memories old and not yet lived.
Ours is the great nonsense language of life—we live Lewis Carroll day after day, waiting for the rabbit-hole fall to end. But it doesn’t end, it melts into something new—not a fall but a glide. Not a glide but a snatch, not a snatch but a zoom, until we find ourselves too big for the tiny house we started in; a giant Alice trying to get back home.
But we are home, because here we are, where we always wanted to be, staring at the radiant immortal before us through blurry eyes and choked sobs.
Life doesn’t pass us by. It buries us with meaning. And this is only the beginning.
Fin.
Lumen et vita
Bits & Bobs
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were talking about spiritual formation. I went on and on about how I care for my soul. Like, the questions I ask myself, how I think about the month ahead, and what I’m actually doing with my time and energy. She told me to write it down and turn it into something she could use in her morning quiet time.
So I did. And then I made it into something you can have, too.
The Soul Planner is eight beautifully designed, print-ready pages built around the rhythms of formation rather than productivity. Four sections: Soul, Season, Month, and Making.
Download once. Print on repeat. Use it on the deck while sipping your coffee and waiting for the world to begin.
It’s $10 and yours instantly. Go here to buy.
Or read a little more about it first, here.
