To Be Grateful, For This Life

As I look ahead, I see that this day looks to be filled with good things, with all the dimensions of life brimming with meaning for me . . .

A walk along a metropark path with some friends.  It's chilly and gray out there (because we live in Cleveland) and it might rain, but oh! to be out in nature! and with a few friends and acquaintances gathering under the name Cleveland Contemplative Walkers.  We don't even know what that means yet, but we will be outdoors, and we will walk, and we will read a few words from Thich Nhat Hanh.

A memorial service.  That may sound strange to others, but the work of a funeral or memorial service is work that I love.  To seek out and arrange the prayers, the music, the words.  To see the family and friends gathered, each in his or her own world of confusion and sadness, and yet connected by death, some glued fast to one another, and others clinging to the tangential lines cast out from one life.  To offer in words something of a person's life and a promise of hope.  

And then, tonight (I hope) the Cleveland Film Festival with at least some of my own family. I love the Cleveland Film Festival: the energy, the creativity, the artistry, the surprises.  If I had it all to do over again, I think I might be a filmmaker, trying to capture visually all that to which words are inadequate.  And the longer I preach, and the more I read, and the deeper I descend into this life, the more I come to recognize how utterly and extensively inadequate our proud little words are.