Time Travelers

With some luck, I may live another twenty years. I am sixty and my mother is eighty. When I look at her, I see my future. My body is changing as rapidly now as an adolescent’s body. I wake up with a stiff right hand, a back that loosens up after a yoga exercise, a mind that is present and accounted for even if forgetful, and a spirit that still soars. Most of my life is now history not possibility. This does not sadden me or weigh me down. In a strange way, it frees me.
I no longer have to worry about what people might think of me. I do not have to carry the weight of the responsibility for the saving of the world on my shoulders. I tried and nothing much changed. I now understand why Jesus said the poor would always be with us. We just can’t get it right no matter how hard we try. I haven’t given up on doing good. I just expect less. If one person is helped, changed, lifted up or laughs because of me, it is enough.
For all that is different in the new century, there is not much change in the basics of the human condition. Our needs are the same... food, shelter, love, work... as our great-grandparents. Our emotions are the same... joy, love, hope, anger, hate, frustration, despair... as the people who lived centuries ago. The outward forms change. The language and expectations are different. The world has changed in many significant ways but we are more like our ancestors than we acknowledge. This does not frustrate me or make me feel hopeless about our future. It comforts and inspires me.
We are all time travelers... carrying the past with us as we live in the present... holding the past, present and future in our own body and soul. My part in the large creation play is rather small. I am a southern white woman, baby boomer born to parents who lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War, came of age in the Viet Nam war, lived through the end of the twentieth century in a country that had freedom of religion and speech. The indignities and predjuidice I have experienced have not been earth shattering or soul splintering. My children are happy, responsible adults who are connected to God and are now grown-up actors in the same play. My griefs, stark and painful though they were and are, have given me opportunity to grow closer to the Fount of all Blessings. I choose to live in gratitude for all I have been given, for all that came before and all that will come after.
I know I have been given great gifts in this life... parents who loved me and provided for me, a childhood church family that called me out and affirmed my gifts, a safe community for my growing up, the gift of great grief in my twenties that taught me to value life, education that taught me to think for myself, a husband who financially supported our family so I could be an at-home mother, piano lessons, many different churches that I have called home in five states, the farm we now live on, friends near and far... I cannot name all the gifts I have been given in my life. All I can do is be grateful.
I choose to see and remember all I have been given not all that I don’t have. The list of what I don’t have is at least as long as the list of what I have been given. I don’t have a living sibling. I don’t have a million dollars in the bank. I don’t have a perfect body. I don’t have a perfect life. I don’t have talents that are recognized by the world at large. So what? Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Like Pollyanna and the Psalmist, I will sing praises for what I have been given. "This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and give thanks for it". All we ever really have is this day... this time capsule that contains our past and present... this one tiny slice of time for our living... this one chance to get it right.
Hanging in my studio is a quote written by one of our pastor friends, Deryl Fleming. It is my guiding light in words. " If there is a dominant note in life as it is meant to be, gratitude is its name. What else is there in the face of all the givens but to be grateful? Sadness to feel and suffering to bear, yet even in the valley of the shadows, we are not alone; Another, the Other, is there, our help and our hope. Therefore, lift up your hearts and let us give thanks to the Lord our God". Selah. Amen and Amen.