life

Death is evil.

I wrote those words some time ago on a post about my GramBea’s death.

War is evil.

I said these words tonight, sitting down with my husband after adieu’ing our dinner guest. I was picking up my newest book, entitled Silver Like Dust, and had paused, looked up from my book, and read out loud the words that brought tears to my eyes when spoken out loud. Words of hate that were printed in a newspaper, spoken about an entire race, during a war. I sputtered through the words, saying when I finished, “That was actually printed! . . . How????.” 

Peter nodded, and commented, calmly, that war does that—dehumanizes people.

Stunned, it occurred to me then that, yes, we are probably seeing a similar sort of dehumanization happening in the all-too-real present war we are witness to.

And, yet, today . .. 

-I chat with a woman I know only through regular stops are her workplace. We share a brief, teary-eyed coversation about the truth of the ambivalence that Mother’s Day brings to those of us who do not fit into the standard boxes . . .

-I am the recipient of an act of simple, loaves-and-fishes kindness . . . yet again . . .

-I sit in awe at the sight of a super-human dancer, while in the midst of a Yo-Yo Ma playlist. The man appears to be made of rubber, in a sublimely graceful series of motions. I stop my reading and gaze at the beauty of a human being who is in pure, uninhibited, un-self-conscious motion.

I marvel.

Life is good.

*photo is from the last day of a long week in the clinic. Getting our new workplace set up, I couldn’t help but smile at the fact that I get to work for a place where we, recognizing the pain that we encounter each day, are willing to creatively insert bright spots into the lives of the little ones coming in for care. “Follow the dragon,” we say, as we usher patients out of the rooms. Wide-eyed stares turn to smiles when they see that yes, indeed, there is a dragon just waiting for them to find him :-)