I Was There

The phone call from the Vice-Principal came at the last minute, and with apologies:

"Would you and your parents be able to be at the Senior Awards Ceremony this evening?"  Somehow my name had been left off the invitation list.

I had a hunch I knew what the award would be and I dreaded it.

Sure enough, as I sat biting my nails through the ceremony, watching my classmates receive honors for excellence in a variety of academic pursuits, the time finally arrived and my name was called.  I won:

Perfect Attendance.

That's right!  While my peers were taking home plaques and trophies in Art and English and Science and Math, I won an award for the unthinkable--I showed up every day.  I was presented a plaque over my protests:  "I'm SURE I was absent once in sophomore year!"

How would I ever live it down?  Seriously, High School had been an experience I was ready to forget; this would be the final humiliation, adding insult to injury.  To this day my face reddens when I think about it.

Now that I think about it, though, it's really OK.  In fact, I'm kind of proud of it.  After all, what more can really be expected of any of us than to simply show up and be ourselves?  For a deeply closeted, somewhat chubby, clumsy and red-faced teen it may have been a disaster.  But in the end, to have had the opportunity to live a full life and to have actually shown up for it every day is the greatest reward.

Carpe diem...there will only ever be one today.  Hope to see you there!

Stardust Memories

This week, just as it does every week, Wednesday will come and go.  But for a few, this one will be different.  They'll use this Wednesday to pause and to reflect, to look back and to look ahead...and to consider their place in the grand scheme of things.  Having set aside the revelry of a Fat Tuesday, they will gather with others of a like mind to practice old rituals--you may even see them with black smudges on their foreheads, mishapen and misunderstood.

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

No matter how you look at it, there's no escaping the inevitable: the party will end and we will all return to the dust from which we were formed.  Whether you are one to believe there's something more or not, the inescapable truth is that life as each of us knows it is coming to an end--sooner than later.  A smudge of ash is a reminder that nothing lasts forever.  We will all die.

But before we allow that sadness to define us, it might be important to consider that the dust from which we are made--the dust to which we will return--is the very same dust that makes up the whole of what is--everything we can see and everything we can't:  Stardust. 

It puts a whole new (star)light on things, doesn't it?  We are made from all that was and all that is and all that will be--which sounds pretty hopeful to me.

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain...

Member

Sometimes I sit, waiting to be rescued--by someone with a better idea, someone with a better opportunity, a better job, a better something or other...someone who will notice me and acknowledge my greatness--until it dawns on me that the only person who is going to do that is me.

Tradition tells us that we are all valued and needed--that there is no one part of the body that is greater or more important than another.  Yet how often do we sit quietly waiting, as if the eye will tell the foot when it's time to start walking, or the hand will tell the mouth when it's the right time to speak, or another brain will stop by to rescue us from our ennui.   But that's not how it works, friends, and deep inside we all know it.  That's not how it works in the Body and that's not how it works in the world.  In the Body, each part knows its role and does its task, orchestrated by a subconscious energy that coordinates our efforts and keeps us moving forward.  The mouth knows its job without the foot telling it (though at times that foot inserts itself....but that's another story).  The ear knows when it's time to listen, even if the mouth doesn't always know when to stop.  And those hands really do know the right thing to do, even if, more often than not, we find them in the cookie jar. 

So the next time you're sitting around waiting for instructions or an engraved invitation to action, remember this--you already know what you can be doing: walking with the troubled, offering a hand to those in need, listening with a caring heart, and speaking the truth in love.