And in my Inbox this morning, from the daily dose of Frederick Buechner I subscribe to, was this gem.
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Be Alive
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YOU ARE SEEING everything
for the last time, and everything you see is gilded with goodbyes. The
child's hand like a starfish on the pillow, your hand on the doorknob. Caught
between screen and window, a wasp unfolds one wing. With a sick smile,
guilt-ridden, the old dachshund lurches off the forbidden couch when you come
through the door, his nose dry with sleep, and makes for the pillow by the
hot-air register. It is the room where for years Christmases have happened,
snow falling so thick by the window that sometimes it has started to snow in
the room, brightness falling on tables, books, chairs, the gaudy tree in the
corner, a family sitting there snowmen, snowbound, snowblind to the crazy
passing of what they think will never pass. And today now everything will
pass because it is the last day. For the last time you are seeing this rain
fall and in your mind that snow, this child asleep, this cat. For the last
time you are hearing this house come alive because you who are part of its
life have come alive. All the unkept promises if they are ever to be kept
have to be kept today. All the unspoken words if you do not speak them today
will never be spoken. The people, the ones you love and the ones who bore you
to death, all the life you have in you to live with them, if you do not live
it with them today will never be lived.
It is the first day because
it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be
alive if you can all through this day today of your life. What's to be done?
What's to be done?
Follow your feet. Put on the
coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your
children and your wife. Think about the work of your hands, the book that of
all conceivable things you have chosen to add to the world's pain. Live in
the needs of the day.
-Originally published in The Alphabet of
Grace
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