Where A Day Becomes Our Life

A day that's full of color grabs at us. There is so much to stimulate the senses and make it easy to feel fully alive. Sunrises begin our daylight hours and sunsets finish the hours where the sun is fading and starting a new day in other lands. It is a wonder how white light forms all the color that we can see, how six notes create all the music we know, and how each day connects us to every bit of time that has been lived and is being lived. People are out there living tomorrow in Australia from my vantage point in the Northeastern United States.

The roots of our lives that grow into what we see, what we hear, and what we do, create, feel, and know become much more when we bring them together. Like a meal filled with new and favorite foods, a dance with live music brightly playing the rhythms and harmonies, or even a sporting game where two teams compete for the goal of completing their task of winning against their opponents there are places we have in bringing our collective experiences into one place, where the kaleidoscope and panorama of memories form, and where a day becomes our life.

Anyone who has savored the sumptuous flavors of meal brought together from scratch in the company of loved ones may have felt how the variety of textures and voices provide a moment of joy in the midst of all of life's happenings. There are the tales of old, recipes, jokes, hopes, and memories, all forming an assortment of smiles and wonder. Gathered together on holidays and week days, our lives form from what we fill them with. In days where we are reminded of the shock of human suffering inflicted by hands and lives nearby, we need to be alive to one another by being present to our needs for friendship and love. So as we meet our neighbors and friends, try to understand our family, and hear what today has brought, we can see our wounds that have fragmented our neighbor's lives and embrace with the hope that cannot be made alone. We can be together in understanding after we listen, as others may have been there for us, so that we can continue to make a way out of our experiences. This way begins the vision of courage of creativity formed from imaginations and memories to hold the world.

It may be that days before us that make us who we are today, but the present can give us most of all a place to dream, feel, and live in ways that matter to us or ways and those that we want to give a try. I've recently been reminded of the warmth inside that can tingle when the cool air rushes by as I spend another wintry day in upstate New York. The sharing of these ruminations feels like a rambling engine as my experience spins out like yarn being knit or crocheted into something more; a fabric of memories filled with color and connection. In the reaches of any period of time shared, time can disappear, flowing through our hearts as it becomes stories; our way of preserving memory and our connection to the future.


                                        

Gathering Together

People have gathered together to share the goodness from their lives for as long as people have been around to harvest of the fruits of their hopes and dreams. These hopes and dreams are often visions of community and prosperity; a sense of well being and home. This has allowed them to see and imagine what shapes their interactions, and to form community based on their common needs and experiences.  As a way of coming together to discover and encounter community, home, food,farmers markets are created to form a community full of aromas and sounds, sights and satisfied taste buds, and also the salutations to the new experiences greeting our sense of touch.

Within these avenues of samples, scintillations appear in people's eyes as they meander slowly among neighbors and through the cascade of tents and booths  looking for the finds that will nourish and delight them for sale by neighbors near and far. Life is formed by the stories we tell, the laughter from our hearts, and the smiles as life is made by the hands that grow it.  I feel alive a part of this interaction as important as the labors shared have become our memory that is always an important part of our lives. We fill our senses with flowers and coffee beans and the days loaves from the bakery as music fills the air from radios and performers. It is here we create community, experience our lives and begin our stroll along the hopes of our neighbors.


The day at the market is a day to join with neighbors and strangers, people from abroad, and from our home. To live with the fruition of our lives, to experience with our senses, to know the energy that is raw and creative flowing from our hearts, our tastes, our moments. At the Rochester Public Market in Rochester, New York, gatherings form on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to bring the ingredients together that yield smiles and joy, a time shared, a friend made, a voter registered, and a community built. The markets near you, and the markets near me are in my understanding the connection of the experience we together have in the building of today and tomorrow from the common dreams of yesterday.

Sights at the Rochester Public Market on a Saturday in June.

Unplanned Beauty

You cannot hold onto the moment, you can only make it last by knowing that the past is what you do with the present. So let the present define what you want your future to be. I wrote this tonight thinking about what life would be like if we knew that our moments are never lost, but changed by the future that is always appearing while our past is what is made of our present. It sounds more complicated than it really is because the past is often with us in our memories or those of other people or in photographs, journals, blog posts, or dreams.

Many times, what we find beautiful is what surprises us. It is unplanned, but we can choose how to accept it or what to make of it. We can be sad because it is fleeting, or fragile, or artificial or we can be amazed at how precious and timely it is. It can also be the realization that your life is changing, and that on the outset new realizations reflect new growth that you never thought was possible before.

I regularly volunteer at a comfort care hospice home where I provide care for residents and their families and friends who visit their loved one during his or her final days. It is a place where peace and love can be given and received not based on what one has done, but because one thrives with it. It is a place where the presence of light in each of us is made known as a beacon of hope or a reassuring comfort that one is not alone, when dying, or being with the dying. Many times while I am there, I find beauty in the moments that are fleeting, the moments that I can't always choose or create, but live with everything to experience and be an important part of.

This past weekend I spent two, four hour shifts listening and being with our resident, and her family. It can be a gift to step into the life of a family at such a moment where you meet loved ones knowing the tenderness and uncertainty of each day that may be someone's last. In these circumstances, there are many beginnings and many times to realize that this is all life is. The beginnings in new aspects of relationships, new chapters of life, beginnings of realizations, and the part of us that takes in another's memory as they pass on.

This may be all life is, but it is through our actions in it that it becomes something extraordinary. Lifting a child up in the air as he laughs, filling taco shells and sharing a meal with those we meet along this journey, crying with a daughter by her dying mother's bedside, hearing two men playing guitars and sharing what will be a memory worth reminiscing in the future, and knowing that what we do to live is what really matters, for life is not about just oneself, it is about everyone.

Unplanned beauty may be the most fleeting and it can be the most inspiring. It is where the light within our soul radiates through our being and connects to the instant we are no longer anyone else but ourselves, with our very personality, and knowing this is what we cannot hold, but what we can remember and make our lives with, both alone and with the human family.

Candles lit outside the hospice home in memory of  loved ones.