a smokeless smoke break

since i seem to have been hangin' out in the world of opposites lately,
i guess it's fitting that both life and death were on my mind this morning.

doin' my thing on the treadmill, i felt how good it felt to just be moving
a bit. how alive it felt. and then i thought of someone who's been fighting
cancer for awhile now and how feelin' alive on the treadmill isn't something
that's goin' on in her life these days.

i got how lucky i was.

she's on my mind a lot. and that right there puts a lot in perspective for me.
and life and death come into my mind once again.

and then walkin' this morning, everything was so still. so quiet.
almost other-worldly like.

it felt as if i was walkin' up the street to heaven.
i grinned as i looked at my neighborhood.......i wasn't IN heaven....
but it was like walkin' up the road to get there.
everything quiet, still, and something in the air asking me over and
over about how i've chosen to live.

i pictured a group of people hangin' in a circle up the road a bit.
it'd have some of the big names in saints and gods and awesome cool beings.
they'd be hangin' in a circle - you know - like a smoke break. only no one
would be smokin'.

i pictured walkin' up to them and facing them.

their eyes looking at you with the question of 'what have you done with
your days?'

gently, non-judging -
wondering if i got what a gift it was.

what would that feel like to face them???
and even try to answer that......

i walked, looked at the sky, at the still still morning and thought about living.
thought about the day ahead.

i don't think it's that i have to DO anything.....you know, like save the world,
or anything like that.

i think it's that i have to hold the day as a gift.
that's it.

which means hold any hurt, any sorrow, any pain right along with holding
the silly and the fun and the happy right along with holding the
mundane and ordinary. and knowing it's like one big stew. you need all
the ingredients. and they all matter.

hold that.
that's what you need to do with your days, ter.

hold that as the gift that it is.

if you did that, ter...that'd be awesome cool.