A Special Sunday

The sands are always shifting, and everyone is finding their way without a map.

Hello from my living room where, today at least, I am in desperate need of a map for this adult life, friends. I offer a little preview of what’s to come this week, and a sharing of one of my favorite memoirs, by Meredith Hall, that I think beautifully reveals in a roundabout way what it means to live a mindful life, not as we conventionally define it, but as I hope to reimagine it in my piece for you all later this week. It has much to do with remembering, reunion and self-discovery. Here is a passage that I have returned to over and over again:

I circle my own obsessive images, examining each small fragment in the light, laying one against the next until the image becomes memory. They are the permanent record, aren’t they? Burned into the chemistry of brain cells, they do not play tricks, do they? What happened has become part of me, etched and immutable. I want to rely on these truths. Obsessive images, a life becoming story, story becoming meaning.

These are my memories, filed and cross-filed in my mind. Is this really how it was? I know, and then the flash of doubt. I want to get it right. These are shifting sands. Say it, then turn your back for a moment, just long enough to see the light move through the high branches of an oak, hear a few notes from a song your heard long ago, catch a flick of a smile or a trembling hand, then return, and you will tell a different story.

Be well, friends. Every blessing to you all.