Hubby and I were driving down our street earlier this evening when the sun was almost gone. You know, that time when the houses that otherwise stand still on your street suddenly light up and you can see all the life inside. It's always amazing to me to catch a glimpse into the richness of other people's lives. It's unexpected. It's 'wonder' full. I think of all the complexities that go on in my own home, the decorations that i carefully chose and placed in their spot, the memories that live in pictures and little keepsakes, the laughter that hubby's rediculous antics evoke in me and the not so pleasant moments when I'm happy that our walls aren't glass, and it makes me marvel that the house next door contains it's own memories and happiness and grief. Not to mention a whole world of complexities and life and tragedy in every house on every street around the world. It's beautiful really to think of all of those houses lighting up every evening when the sun goes down. It was an appropriate reflection today as everyone remembers 9/11 --5 years ago. There is no shortage of memorial program on television this evening and each one shows a sea of faces grieving and loving and fearing. Each one their own little house lighting up with life for the rest of us to glimpse into for just a moment. Gosh...it makes me just want to repent for those moments when I darn near hate the garbage men for waking me up at 7.a.m. on Saturday and when I become seriously impatient with the barista because she made me a mocha instead of a white mocha. I want to repent and apologize to each person individually and ask them all 'who' they are and where they came from. But i wont, because we don't do that.... Or do we? I think in moments of unimaginable tragedy, like 9/11 or the death of our own loved ones we are moved to stop and repent and reflect and then to encounter each other with the wonder and intensity that our human dignity deserves. It makes me want to love......which is, I'm sure, God's plan from the beginning. The whole reality that God IS Love - Deus Caritas Est! gains new perspective when I think of all of these dynamic beings of life and memories and experience and action that he has created and even now continues to breathe into existance. He loves each one with the full reality of all of their history and mess and personality, He loves them to the depths of their potential and in spite of their guilt and he is ever amazed at them as if the sun is always down and the lights are always already showing life within. We grow bored of how amazing humans are so quickly and so frequently. Another call to childlikeness....
"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening. "Do it again" to the moon. it may n ot be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
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