Friday, April 11, 2008

God Moment

I may be a little bit in love with my life right this second.

Yeah, we should be in love with our lives all the time, but who the fuck actually is? Potheads, maybe… you never see an angry pothead…

Well. Right now, right this second, it’s actually true.

I am sitting on my front porch. It is 75+ degrees outside. There is a beautiful breeze, and everything around me is green. I have counted four different types of flowers growing in my yard: wisteria (maybe lilac, I can’t really tell them apart), daffodils, baby’s breath, and my favorite – azaleas. I love azaleas; they are sturdy, they are consistent, they are beautiful, and they are totally, one hundred percent unapologetic. What other North American flower can pull off being gloriously, unabashedly, riotously hot pink? If an azalea were a person, I think it would be the punk chick with a hot pink Mohawk who works at a record store wearing a vintage Ramones t-shirt and secretly reading Jane Austen novels behind the counter. I love azaleas so much I sometimes consider naming my first child Azalea. Or…well…maybe a dog. Kids freak me out.

My wind chimes are making music this afternoon. The little lotus bell from Japan is chiming sweetly and my bamboo pipes sound like moored boats at a dock, knocking against each other in gentle waves. There are two big monarch butterflies hopping from blossom to blossom on the azalea bushes three feet away from me. There’s a wooly worm crawling on the arm of my chair, and the birds are fussing at each other everywhere around me.

I’m having what I used to call a God moment.

I might still call it a God moment, if for nothing else but for lack of a better word.

All the time, I hear people standing on mountain tops or in wooded trails or staring at beautiful sunsets making the same comment. They always say something along the lines of, “How can someone see all this and not believe in a God?”

You know, I have a love/hate relationship with such people. I love them because when I’m having moments like this, I completely agree. This Earth, in all of its beauty, is part of what God is to me. The hate part comes in for a variety of reasons. They are, as follows:

1. That person is infringing on my God moment.

2. That person is making the statement that they are much more appreciative of nature and the Earth and mountains and whatever because they believe that a higher power created it. Not just a higher power, but THEIR higher power. As if everybody else in the world doesn’t appreciate beauty on earth because THEY don’t believe that GOD, specifically, created it. I think everybody appreciates it. Everybody finds something higher, something greater than themselves when they see it, whether that higher power is “God” or not.

3. Not all of God is external. At least not in my head, anyway. God is sort of half and half: half outside of us, and half inside of us. There is a piece of God in me, and that piece contributes as much to a God moment as the outside piece. When I have a God moment, I’m selfish a bit, I suppose. The outside part of God helps me find the inside part of God. I am content, thrilled and overjoyed even, to be me. I am finding something divine about me, about my life, about my existence. If love is the meaning of life, then surely loving yourself, and finding divinity in yourself, is part of the purpose of life, too.

I tend to collect quotes and phrases and song lyrics that sort of define what I think life should be. Sometimes I even write my own. This time I can’t claim credit. The two quotes that best sum up how I am thinking this afternoon come from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (although the first one was the word of a philosopher that she quoted, I just thought it was great):

To the person who wonders about people who see beauty in the world and don’t believe in God, I would like to say what the stoic Epictetus said: “You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.”

To everyone else who is NOT having a God moment, I would like to say this:

“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”

Sunday, April 6, 2008

My Right Foot

Hmph. I hate being injured.

I have managed, ever so gracefully, to bust my ass. Or, well, more accurately, my ankle. It's quite purple and puffy and now because of all the blood pooling down there half of my foot, even the uninjured part, is also turning bluish purple. Bah.

For about the last thirty six hours, I have been watching movies, eating, and rotating a heating pad and a bag of frozen peas over my blasted ankle. I really want to get out of the house, I'm not sure if I can drive at all, and every time I so much as hobble to the laundry room and stand up for more than fifteen minutes, I start to hurt. Alot.

I REALLY don't do this injured thing well.

Which made me think about people who are in bed all the time for various illnesses and injuries. HOW CAN PEOPLE SURVIVE THIS WAY FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME? I haven't even been like this for two days and I'm already frustrated and pissed off and starting to lose some of my mental clarity.

...although it was AWFULLY nice to have such great nursemaids/friends/general company keepers around for the weekend. They brightened things up considerably.

Just needed to rant a minute to get this out of my system. May you all avoid tree branches that would incapacitate you for a whole weekend.