A Reminder From a Thought-full Friend

>And what did you do on earth?< I descended daily into the hush – if only for a moment, but sometimes for blessed hours at a time. I followed the shimmering threads which lured me into the night, full of wonder at all that was unfolding. I opened myself wide to gratitude, to the delight that there was anything at all, much less pink-petaled peonies and generous handfuls of red berries, the incredible sweetness of things, or the way dawn and dusk could reveal my own new thresholds, how a walk by the sea can change everything, and that I could be so well loved, and love in return, that I could dance on earth’s forest floor and say “yes” to life from the belly of sorrow. >And what was the best of it?< I was saved by beauty again and again, the golden glimmer of sunlight across wet pavement revealing a luminous world, and the stone ruins of churches and monasteries, with their arches of ancient longing holding ten thousand prayers, ten thousand paths to hope. >And what would you have changed?< Only perhaps to have worried less about what might come, which never did in exactly the way I imagined. And to spend less time in front of screens, offering more of myself to the elements of wind and rain and mud, to roll with playful abandon in the wet grass, the way dogs do. >And what will you do now?< I will reach across the veil and whisper the word “remember” to anyone who will listen.

"Remember" by Christine Valters Paintner