Contemplation...

     I had a very interesting day today...very interesting to ME, that is!  You of course, hold the right to object...and I maintain the right to "censor" your opinion.  LOL

     My day started with an email from a long, lost friend of nearly 23 years ago.  I've been in touch with this friend many times over the past several years, so it was not necessarily unusual that she emailed me.  What WAS unusual however, was my response to this email.

     You see, my friend found her husband dead on the bathroom floor last year.  Neither seemed old enough to die of natural causes, but her husband had a major coronary and his number got pulled from the big celestial hat in the sky...it was just his time to go.

     This was obviously a horrible event for my friend as her husband was and had always been the love of her life...her soulmate...her partner.  Without him, she fell into what seemed to be a serious depression.  Emails stopped coming and emails sent were unanswered.

     Today was one of the first self-written emails I have received from her in so many months (excluding a few forwarded jokes which, by the way, weren't that funny!) and it was good to know she was alive and reaching back out into the world again...it was good to "feel" my friend coming back after feeling like she might be lost forever.

     Seeing the entire process of life coming full circle again in my friend got me thinking...and, unfortunately, I'm always DANGEROUS when I think!  I'm much safer when I just "feel" and try to stay out of my head.  But I couldn't quit my obsessive thinking.

     I began dipping into that great abyss I call my thoughts and I could not shake a melancholy sadness that began to flow through me.  Of course I tried to THINK my way out of this uncomfortable feeling, but couldn't...it only strengthened.  So, rather than "sit with myself and my feelings", I opted to do the other most reasonable Zen thing I could THINK of...I chopped wood and carried water!  OK, not exactly because I don't even have a wood pile (stop bragging, MDMHVONPA) or a well, but I went outside and detailed the inside of my car.

     After several hours of rubbing and scrubbing, I finally dragged myself into my home and threw myself down...and I STILL felt uncomfortably sad.  There was a longing inside me to "know" something that I just couldn't grasp in my mind...it had to do with living and dying...it had to do with the disease of MS...it had to do with understanding my place in this life...it had to do with MY life and where I am going...it had to do with MORE than just the lint in my belly button.  LOL

     I noticed a book on my shelf that I haven't looked at in a long time.  It's the book in the picture, "Notes From The Song Of Life", which is no longer in print (just in case you thought you'd run out and grab a copy...yeah, right!).  It was written by a modern-day monk, Brother Tolbert McCarroll, back in the 1970's and it is a book I have consulted in the past when searching for answers.  Today, Brother Tolbert did not let me down once again.

     I've decided at the risk of jail for breaking copywrite law, I must share with you at least excerpts from the section called, "The Story"...hopefully a catholic monk would have pity on my soul and forgive me!  If not, I'll most likely rot in prison or hell.  LOL

     You are a necessary part of a long story.  Your parents and grandparents should have helped you feel your place in the story when you were yet a young child.  But a while back it seemed as if everyone forgot the story.  So you grew up wondering about your value and your worth.  You have searched for a place where you can belong.  Now, when you are older and it is harder, you must learn that your value is in being you and you belong here.

...You are a flower and a seed.  You are part of a story which began with the first cell of life.  That story will continue on after you.  The many people and things you have touched in your life will be influenced by you.  The history of the world would not be the same if you had not been here.  The smallest ripples you cause today may bring huge waves in ages to come.

...You are a guardian of the seeds for the world to come.  All that has gone before and all that is yet to come is within you.  Through you passes humanity's saving fire.  You are running in a relay.  This is the moment you have been chosen to hold the torch.  You cannot refuse to run.  Whatever you do is part of your page in the story of life.

     Be yourself.  That is who you were meant to be.  You are a note, a necessary note in a beautiful song! 

     Thank you, Brother Tolbert, for your wisdom.  You were exactly what I needed today to draw me out of my "funk". 

     Although I really can't complain about the funk...it did, after all, result in a clean and shining auto interior!