The human body is fragile, its skin torn by the wisp of a branch, its bone broken by a three-foot fall. How do any of us make it to adulthood? We are like day-lilies, opening to the morning and withering in the lull of evening. This Friday, we heard about a new life who was eager to greet the morning. Born three weeks early, July 4. And at church we heard news of a life's evening, breath closing its petaled figure that same day.
While I can't understand beginnings and endings of any sort—whether the simple flower or the convoluted life of a human—even more incomprehensible is the thought of the eternal flooding of day, a forever-spilling light that grows not stronger nor does it dim. The petals that do not fall, our lives in forever's unchanging-ness.
Because what makes me human if not change, growth, renewal? How can I be if I don't decay, cannot be dirty or bleed?
It is almost enough just to be created, just to be known in this moment. Sometimes eternity seems an abyss, not a blessing.
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