and we haven't much Time
Nothing lasts forever, especially the life of an individual, as you will realize with gratitude as you move farther and farther into extreme old age, but for as long as it lasts (and with the now-and-then sciatica under at least relative control and possibly fading altogether for another Time and half a Time!), it's fun just being alive. For as long as I remember, my personal fun includes rising early, some might call it very early or even too early, simply to Be, to Be here, to enjoy Being, because life itself is good, appreciated, I'm most grateful to Be, and to have Been.
Slightly to digress: not being a pain person, and accustomed to never having any pain whatsoever, and, hopefully, coming out of sciatica's latest visitation of pain, I'll confess that when the pain is at its worst ... No, nevermind, belay my last.
Anyway, what's so great about Being up in the very early darkness? Sometimes it's looking out into what a line in our Book of Common Prayer calls "the vast expanse of interstellar space." Sometimes it's the lonely quiet. This morning it was to enjoy a violent thunderstorm as it passed through. I mean, looking to the south over Shell Island and on beyond, there's nothing but water, the Gulf of Mexico through the Straits of Yucatan and the Caribbean Sea, between me and Limon, Honduras.
Nomesane? See what I mean? It's a long swim and too far for the crow to fly, though maybe a migrating osprey, IDK.
The thunderstorm this dark, early, two o'clock Tuesday morning May 14, 2024 passed west to east and on through too quickly and was gone, but I enjoyed what I was given of it, along with my first mug of hot. For a change that happens maybe a couple Times or so a year, this coffee was not black. Last evening after supper, I mixed one of my now and then special elixir sauces to spoon over my tiny sliver of dessert: a few tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk and a pour of whipping cream, whisked into unity and ready for the spooning over. Half of it was leftovers for my Tuesday morning coffee - -
which I do not put in my magic mug because I don't allow anything but freshly brewed hot & black in it, so this was in an ordinary mug. Coffee with cream & condensed milk: comfort food for the guilty sinner experiencing the early morning thunderstorm from a safe vantage point. It's all good.
Life itself can range from unbearable to exquisite. What is exquisite depends upon who is experiencing it and what they are experiencing. BTDT. What's unbearable depends on one's tolerance level for physical and/or psychic pain, and how the pain affects what life means to you and for you, and ultimately how you deal with that. Speaking from here within myself, I have a low tolerance for pain, experientially, for physical pain, which the sciatica tests every few years.
My survivability tolerance for psychic pain is examined as I read the news coming back from ordinary folks in Gaza and Israel, of their unbearable pain. Not only about what the nature of life itself already does to us that we can't avoid, but especially what we do to each other that does not have to happen. We can be dreadful creatures, testing the pain tolerance of God's own self.
"How painful it is to the Lord when one of his people dies." Psalm 116:15 (Good News Translation)
As the preacher says, My friends, life is short, and we haven't much Time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.
Getting up early like this helps gladden my own heart as I travel here inside my own Being.
From Psalm 90, "So soon passeth it away and is gone" applies as well to life itself, as to the early morning thunderstorm, indeed to the early morning itself!
RSF&PTL
T88&c