I could have been killed and nearly was. Two mornings ago. The day began well, a bit early for me because I needed to drive an hour to a ceremony honoring veterans at Middleburgh Elementary where my good buddies, the twins, James and Michael Clark, aged seven, second grade, asked me to be their honored guest. Could I say no? There were maybe a hundred other vets there from all the branches. This is a world I'm not normally in, so I was surprised to see just how moved I was by the outpouring of pure feeling. James and Michael were thrilled, and so was I. A fine way to start the day.
And then I headed home.
I was not impaired in any way, hadn't even yet taken my normal morning meds, and yet, one moment I was almost home, an instant later flying off the road, into the woods, plowing through thick scrub with a tree coming smack at me. Deep mud - that much maligned substance - slowed me down and saved my life.There was no other car involved, no person, no animal. Just me and what little was left of my Subaru. Tore the front to shreds. No bags deployed. Ribs vaguely bruised but roaring luck intact.
I could apply street theology to all this. What's the take-away? Had I been saved for some higher purpose? However, that's not my bent. And yet. I had, in a manner of speaking, been saved,even if the agency was thick mud,so what am I gonna do about it? Not much more than I'm doing already. Just keep on truckin'. Workin' on my stuff. Gettin' it out there. Like always. And yet. It seems as if I ought to have some vital take-away from such an experience, some visceral adjustment other than maybe my driving days came to an end against that tree, that maybe I am older than I thought I was when I set out that morning. Maybe it's that simple. "I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." That simple.
The Next Day
Just a bit ago this evening I was having some fine time with my five year old grandson, Dorian. He's learning to read now, and it's a pleasure to point out a word and have him tell me what it is. Pirate. Penguin. Magnet. Volcano. We also went through a delicious book utilizing sound technology to play Beethoven's 5th and teach about the instruments. He now knows the difference between a cello and a bass, an oboe and a bassoon. So, I got to thinking, completely off tangent, Can you be in a State of Grace if you don't believe in God? Doesn't it depend on how you define it? I tend towards the secular - a feeling of sheer delight in being alive, thrilled to be doing what I'm doing this very moment, a connection to the most modest of inanimate objects. The pen in my hand was once crude oil was once the guts and bones of creatures that lived eons before I ever picked it up, was some sort of vegetation before that. I might be holding Triceratops in my hand right now, or a fern. If you want to connect this to God, go ahead, but I don't wish to complicate matters. It's so simple. I'll take sheer delight. Leave it that way.
So, there is a take-away, although nothing I haven't taken away before. I wish the following words were mine, but Kurt Vonnegut gets the credit.
"I urge you all to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur at some point, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
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