You forgot to spritz yourself with your good-natured Kumbaya spray before you left home yesterday, and you were a bit short with someone you care about and respect. You are fretting about this and several other things, the same things day in and day out, only the particulars altering. Other people you know are carrying so much, too much. You worry for them. Why aren’t you carrying more? We’re all a loose stitch away from coming apart at the seams.
You head to work, late as usual, rounding the corner you see the school bus arriving. Slowing, you see a mom and her young son waiting on their porch holding hands, he shining the widest smile you ever saw, hopping from leg to leg, giddy to get on the bus and start his day. Mom hugs her boy. You have just become today’s lucky recipient of a drive-by jolt of joy. Let it wash through you, let it be a touchstone.
A friend and you are emailing each other about this, that, the other and whatnot. She sends you a one-liner that makes you laugh out loud. Suddenly you are right there with her. You see her ready smile, hear her voice, the way she goes from earnestness to levity and back again in flow. Her name is Gift.
On a windy night standing beneath the skylight in your place, the one that you often take for granted, you are awed by the incredible display of blowing branches on a magnificent tree, a priceless, original work of art, irreplicable. Whisper, I will try to be worthy.
Swimming. Kick, kick, kick, breath to the left, kick, kick, kick, breath again to the left. Wrong. Lessons would make you more efficient… is it too late? Awkward technique aside, shapeshifting feels good in the cleansing water, the lengths, the laps, the rhythm, the exertion, the community of others in the pool, the solace of your lane. Off to the deep end, goggles flipped up, body leaning back to rest, floating, cradled by Grace. Baptism and renewal each time.
The thread does break, the stuffing will spill out, the mending of the seam may take time, if it’s ever done at all. The reminders always come to shift the focus, if only for a moment. It’s all precious.
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Divine Ready 