Just to be alive

The plans for a two-week bike and barge tour out of Amsterdam were set in place last fall. Winding through the Netherlands’ scenic geography. Windmills. Castles. Quaint coffee shops with delightful pastries.

And here I sit at home—due to an unforeseen medical issue—while Dan and four of our friends venture along the busy waterways and cycle through the picturesque countryside.

All photos: Dan Lawry

It actually took me a couple weeks to convince Dan he should go with our friends.

“It won’t be any fun without you,” he said.

“I know,” I countered with a twinkle. “But you can do this.”

My days here at home have been slow moving. Writing. Watering the flowers around our fire pit. Reading in an Adirondack chair in the shade of a choke cherry tree. And, because I’m dog-sitting, gentle walks with my furry roommate.

Meanwhile, Dan sends photos of Van Gogh paintings, of layers of arched bridges over waterways, a beautifully crafted wooden ship.

While I notice the berry clusters on our mountain ash tree beginning to turn golden. The happy gait of my furry roommate on neighborhood walks. My lungs fill with fresh mountain air. My legs work. My smile works.

In one of her poems, Mary Oliver invites us to listen to the performance of the goldfinches “that have gathered in a field of thistles for a musical battle.”

Part of her poem reads:

It is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in this broken world.

I beg of you,

do not walk by

without pausing

to attend to this

rather ridiculous performance.

What if we didn’t pass by the sound of goldfinches gathered for a concert, for a musical battle? What if we paid attention?

Meanwhile, Dan sends photos of ageless stone buildings with minarets and ancient castles and beautiful old churches …

… while I read in the cushioned Adirondack chair, listen to the buzz of a grasshopper scraping its back wings, watch our resident squirrel raid the bird feeder.

The thing is, we won’t always get what we want. Challenges and heartbreak and losses will happen as long as we live in these earthly shells.

But we have options for how we respond.

In a letter to the ancient church in Philippi, the Apostle Paul wrote:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation …” – Philippians 4:12

The secret is gratitude.

I can whine about an illness that caused me to be left behind. Or I can speak gratitude for a Father who always and only chooses for my highest good. Whether it makes earthly sense or not.

And I can pay attention to all the beauty and miracles, to all the graces that surround me in my left-behind state.

Life will dish out far more serious challenges than missing out on a much-anticipated bike and barge tour through the Netherlands.

I’ve lived some of those challenges. I know what it’s like to hear, You’ve got cancer. To watch my first husband diminish with each passing day. To wonder how I was going to make ends meet.

Brian Doyle wrote a book of what he calls “uncommon prayers.” His writing is littered with wit and profoundness and run-on sentences. In one of the short chapters, Doyle thanks God for a specific insect:

Prayer in thanks for the little flying dinosaurs we call dragonflies. Because they are unbelievably cool, that’s why, and we casually glance at them when they whizz past, and rarely if ever sit down in a daze and contemplate the fact that they are astonishing miracles, the saber-toothed tigers of the insect world, and they are the most amazing aeronautical engineers and fighter pilots … Thank the Engineer for absolutely first-rate design and construction. What an artist, what craft, what imaginative leaps! And so: amen.

Doyle has the same idea as poet Mary Oliver. How often do we casually glance at the uncountable miracles in nature? An avian concert in a field? Fighter pilots of the insect world whizzing past? The antics of two squirrels chasing each other along the fence?

It seems to me that as we learn to weather the smaller disappointments of life with gratitude, then we can face the larger things with that same gratitude, and with grace and a heart that knows its Creator is kind and compassionate. Even when we don’t understand.

It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.