A year of medical recovery cycles, and forced -- yet blessed -- contemplation

 

  This year doesn't end for several more months, but already it has been one of my toughest ever.

  That's saying something, As of June 9, I marked 70 of those trips around Ol' Sol. In March, it was brain surgery, several months of recovery from removal of a benign tumor. In August, it was heart surgery, a re-replacement of a failing aortic valve. More recovery ahead, a 12-week hospital-run exercise and dietary program.

  Barbara, my 68-year-old wife, has completed her cataract surgeries this year, too; now, doctors have decided they want to do some precautionary tests on her heart as well. The past year-plus has been especially tough for her, too -- her father died, the subsequent emotional rollercoaster of grief and unraveling his estate, my medical crises, the usual marital dramas of our kids, the inevitable growing pains of grandchildren, etc.

  Trying to decide whether to do so, and then make inquiries about writing/editing freelance work on my own part has been an on-and-off again endeavor. I get recruited to write or edit by a travel news outfit here, or invited to apply for freelance gigs at an Orthodox Christian media company there . . . and then ghosted by both.

  What has been the one consistent priority in my 2023 life has been my faith, even with illnesses also plaguing those at my parish, clergy and staff alike -- resulting in last-minute cancellations of services, meetings, studies.

  And so, I pray, finding continuity and solace in candles, incense, and venerating those people and events depicted on my corner wall of icons. For me, it is an experience enveloped by and daily taking spiritual flight within the recitation of ancient praises, petitions, and the words of communion, and my far inferior yet sincere outpourings of gratitude, pain, love, and anger, ignorance, and epiphany -- all punctuating a silent inner dialogue on behalf of human beings living and departed.

  I read and learn from those brothers and sisters of faith present, sharing thoughts and insights in audio, video, and other modern media . . . and from reading the millennia-old lives and wisdom of those St. Paul referred to as that "great cloud of witnesses" supporting us just beyond the veil.

  And you know what? Those glimpses are into the timeless, eternal, and immortal environment in which we live, and breathe, and move, and have our being.  

 There is beauty, even in this mad world of ours. It can be in the words of a poet, or the prose of a gifted writer (hey, see, I know at least a couple!) who weaves beautiful accounts of history, culture, heroism, and the artistic miracles of mortal men and women that transcends their creators' lifetimes.

Beyond words, there is music. Beyond instruments and sound, there is nature: a breeze-caressed forest, the lapping of ocean waves on a rocky beach, fireflies scattering on a warm, humid night, and the untainted delight on the faces and in the eyes of children who chase them.

In a way, all these other things are good, and if you see the glow or hear the whispers of the sacramental with them, even holy -- if they are embraced amid the cadence of our heart beats and breaths.

These, too, can be our fleeting tastes of eternity.

 My wife and I look forward to experiencing such moments by soon resurrecting our RVing plans so delayed this year by life's unexpected events.

 

 

 

 

Finding the beauty in the time of Covid-19 . . . around us, and in us

As a 5-year-old, I plucked a flower, delighted by its glowing yellow and white leaves and sweet scent -- it's very life -- and raced inside from the backyard to the kitchen, where I proudly presented it to my mother.

It just seemed right to present that flower, that fragile discovery of beauty, to the most loving and most beautiful person I had known in my then short life. (That an Orb-weaver spider dangled from it's stem was a development Mom handled with aplomb, and a quick shake of mycgft outside the back door).

Throughout my ensuing years as a child, teen and young man, I courted beauty and wonder by playing and later backpacking amid the creeks, brooks and rivers of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho's mountain meadows, forests, and wilderness expanses.

The vibrant cycles of life in nature -- its unfathomable (to me, anyway) variety in living art, form, purpose and even the very fact of such intricate existence -- filled me with peace and a sense  of belonging to something inconceivably bigger than me.

Now, six weeks out from my 67th ride on Earth's circuit of Old Sol, I'm finally learning that every day spent in beauty -- where sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste cascade in sum to inform and overwhelms a sixth sense of wonder -- brings contemplation, meditation, prayer and grateful worship of the Creator of it, and us all.

This is my purpose in life. Maybe yours, too?

As an Orthodox Christian, I celebrate finding such observations are many in my faith's two millennia of saintly sages' visionary revelations, hymns and prayers. These works of theirs still echo those sentiments of wonder and gratitude today, with wisdom, awe, and love deeper and purer as both personal, and metaphysical prose and poetry that I cannot approach.

Still, to taste and express even something of the same epiphanies? And to share them? Personally priceless.

This is the time of Covid-19 and self-isolation, but if we will accept it, also the opportunity for stretching perception to discover the universe contained in a flower, bird, insect, or the way water falls over a mountain stream's rocks -- or on the face of a child, parent, a passing stranger, and yes, even in the heart belonging to that person in the mirror.

I know that beauty in nature, the cosmos, and the potential for growing it within as we see it cultivated and present in others, is a Truth that finds expression beyond Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, to varying degrees, it reverberates in myriad other religions and philosophies that seemingly draw on a primordial concept of humankind.

One of many such examples: "Beauty in front of me, Beauty behind me, Beauty above me, Beauty below me, Beauty all around me, I walk in Beauty," the Diné (Navajo) elders have prayed from pre-historic times.

While appreciating and treasuring such universal expression of seminal truths, personally, I find them most fully and clearly conveyed within my own faith.

"In Him we live, and breathe, and have our being," St. Paul wrote (Acts 17:28). "O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who are everywhere present and fillest all things," Orthodox Christians intone, echoing the apostle in the daily Trisagion prayers.

But wherever you are in matters of faith, refocusing your gaze from our failed, manufactured "reality" of ego, entertainment, work, etc., to what exists independently of all that -- both around us, and within us -- is what our current crisis offers each of us.

And that is too good to pass up.