One Never Knows: Thursday's Reflection

"What should I write about today?" I often have a number of ideas or possibilities when I sit down the day before I publish one of my posts. That was not the case this time, however, but I trusted that my morning meditation time or walk would bear some fruit.

I opened my Bible and read the reading assigned by the Brian McLaren's We Make the Road By Walking.

             Look at the birds of the air; 
            they neither sow nor reap 
            nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly 
            Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 
            And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to 
            your span of life." (Matthew 6: 26-27)

I sat with the familiar scripture and with the accompanying devotional material, and then I turned to the other book I am reading, Ripening Time, Inside Stories for Aging with Grace by Sherry Ruth Anderson. I read a section in which the author describes how she reaches out to touch her husband when he stops snoring during the night to see if he is still alive. And he does the same to her. She writes, 

              Death has begun to feel like a continual murmur, 
              an intimate consultation I do with the end point 
              that is coming. It's not something I talk about, but
              a kind of certainty is here now, making the time
              distinctly different from my middle age. p. 97

I had just finished reading those words when Bruce called up the stairs to me, saying there was an EMT vehicle and three police cars in front of our next door neighbor's house. I joined him outside, and we knew the news was not good when the EMT people left the house and the police stayed. 

 Our neighbor, a man of our age, had died. Apparently a heart attack. 

Later we delivered fruit and rolls for the gathered grieving family. We held our neighbor who is in that stunned, shocked place. She briefly told us the story she will repeat many times about finding him on the kitchen floor when she got up in the morning. 

I ache for her. 

This could be me. This could be you. 

Eventually, I returned to the garret and finished reading the chapter in the Anderson book. She ends the chapter with these words:

                  It's so important to contact the depth in ourselves
                  while we still can, find our connection with the 
                  universal ground. p. 103

One never knows.

An Invitation
What will you do today to live more openly, more compassionately, more authentically? I would love to know.