Tuesday 20 November 2012

Blessed

This title might strike those that know me as surprising, since I'm very much an atheist. However I find that religions have pinched many of the best words, and I have no shame in using them, I do so with gleeful abandon. While 'blessing' is generally thought of as a gift from god, conferred by a man of god perhaps, I prefer my own interpretation, and one from the free online dictionary I just looked up to back-up my stake in the word: "Something promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being, or prosperity; a boon."

It's been a crazy few days (in a quite literal sense) and I've run the gamut of emotions within each 24 hour period. Amid the chaos there have been shards of brightness that pierced through my internal gloom; most often in the form of friends, old and new, that reached out to help lift me from the darkness. I haven't been easy to save, so their love and patience has meant the world.

Things are still going to be chaotic for a while, but I feel somewhat more steady. After an unusually productive evening I'm feeling ready to fall into bed, but decided that instead of adding to my gratitude journal, I'd stick it up here instead. I'm deeply thankful for the people in my life, and tonight I feel a sense of peace. Blessed indeed.

My final meditation for the day which fits so well with my feeling of gratitude, comes from John Steinbeck:

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist, and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."




9 comments:

  1. By the way ... I fully agree about religious vocabulary.

    Our history is such that religion developed much of our language, including. the whole gamut of means for expressing wonder. To not use any of that would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

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  2. Any word is fair raiment--if it fits comfortably, wear it (just don't count on spell check to tell you if your slip is showing). :-)

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  3. [big grin] I have a feeling that my current favourite expression: "Holy crap on a cracker!" perhaps doesn't have the richness and depth that you're both referring to, and that I aim for in my less silly moments.

    In my defence, I do use it to express wonder...!

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  4. Its interesting that you mention chaos. I think religion mostly looks on chaos in a negative way, since how could anything divine be anything but orderly (and therefore, boring). But chaos has come into its own and even has scientific institutes devoted to its study (e.g Santa Fe Institute). You might even say there are two types of people, one verging towards chaos. I leave it to you to guess which type is boring.

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    1. This comment has kept me smiling! While talking it over with a friend in statistical language, he reminded me that "normal" is smack bang in the middle of a bell curve. I prefer the tails - it's where all the fun stuff happens!

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  5. What a lovely post!

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    1. Thank you! ;-)

      I'm truly grateful, I have some lovely people in my life, and have met (in a cyber sense)some more lovely people through writing this blog. It's very easy when I'm feeling low to feel lonely or cynical, so recognising the good things, the weird and the wonderful, and the generous natures of the people in my life really helps to counteract that! I do feel very lucky :-)

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    2. People are always the most important thing, when we get down to the foundations of our lives.

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