Meaning in the Mundane

I walk through the garden on the beaten path of the many who have lost themselves in cold, frozen, darkest days of winter. The winter has been long. I am the dead twigs. I am the dry leaves. All around is evidence of beauty that once was but is no longer. As I walk I notice little plaques stuck in the ground, placed there to label what once grew there but since has succumbed to the frost of this life: little tombstones marking the graves of once-blosssoming things. As I walk, I look closer at all the dead things. The skeleton trees start to speak words of life. From their weary branches sprout buds and soon blossoms. Through crunchy brown leaves pierce fresh green stalks. It is then that I realize the plaques are not tombstones at all. Though they reference the past, they do not stop there. They are bold declarations of all that is still to come: the beauty that will be restored! Although for a while, the plants that they mark are buried deep in the ground, soon from their earthen t...

Today I had the opportunity to view nativities from around the world. Each was culturally very different: made with different materials, featuring different animals, different colors, and different designs. I was struck by these differences among scenes that each proclaim the same message: that God has come to man.  And not only did He come to us, He made Himself like us. And how better to convey the message that God came for all men than to portray His coming with so many different mediums? That God did come for the prim and proper is shown in so many nativity scenes. But God also came for the poor and disheveled, for those elegantly clothed and those who wear rags, for those of all colors, all shapes and all sizes. People from every corner of earth get to celebrate God coming to THEM! Today the nativities taught me again that God's coming to us is a personal gift. He comes and He is just what each of us needs. We don't need to chase after Him hopelessly. Instead ...

Nevertheless. What a powerful word. It injects hope when placed after any trial, tribulation, failure, or sorrow. It acknowledges the past but doesn't let me stay stuck there. It reminds me that my past does not dictate my future, that none of my failures indicate that I will never succeed, that even in weakness I can be strong. Tacked on to the end of every sentence that describes my shortcomings, nevertheless is a tool that enables me to be kind to myself, to hope that tomorrow's outcome might be different from today's, and to remember that one thing does not always lead to another. Nevertheless I persisted. Nevertheless I stand tall. Nevertheless I have worth and significance. Nevertheless tomorrow will come. Nevertheless gives me hope.

Some people climb mountains by choice. Chasing adventure, the rush, the beauty of nature, the glory, or the fame they go out of their way to find majestic hills to venture up. But then there are the mountain climbers who climb out of necessity. They climb because, on the journey of life, they've been placed at the foot of a mountain range and over is the only way through. The thing about this kind of mountain climbing is that you don't feel brave while you're doing it. You didn't choose to climb for sport or for fame or for glory. You don't feel exhilarated by the beautiful view, for you never have time to stop and take it in. Desperate you cling to the side of the mountain as you scramble for footholds and fight to catch your breath. Rain beats down on your back as the slope grows slipperier. Sometimes it's all you can do to hang on for dear life and to hope that by morning your strength will return to propel you up the steep terrain. No, you don't feel...

I don't know how to spell the word gray. Black and white are easy to spell - but gray? I never know whether to use the e or the a. But maybe there's meaning there... Black and white are definitive colors. They have one shade each. And one spelling each. As soon as black is mixed with the tiniest drop of white, it is considered gray. Similarly the tiniest bit of black turns white to gray. Appropriately, gray, which comes in many different shades, also has more than one spelling. Gray is neither up nor down. Neither here nor there. Neither right nor wrong. It's inbetweenness is what makes gray gray. Or grey grey...? The people I look up to and hope to emulate the most are those who know how to live in the gray. Certainly there are some things in life that truly ARE black or white. But there are so many people who make up blacks and whites about the way other people behave and live -- blacks and whites that don't belong in gray areas. But then you come across the rar...

I work as an office administrator in a busy doctor's office. Creating and maintaining order in chaos is my job. With so much to keep track of, forgetting happens frequently. My forgetting can negatively impact our patients as well as my coworkers. DAILY some piece of information or other slips through the cracks in my brain and falls into the abyss of forgotten information from whence it cannot be retrieved. Occasionally I can bungee jump down into the abyss and bring up small loads of previously forgotten information. But for the most part, once it's fallen down there, there's no retrieving it. But where is the meaning behind all of this forgetting? It means that I am human. And maybe that's all that it means. My forgetting doesn't mean that I don't care. It doesn't mean I'm not working hard. It just means that my brain has limited storage space. Because I'm human. Maybe to be human is just to experience forgetting sometimes.