Today I discovered, for the first time, that the annual Stair Climb for Cystic Fibrosis is being done in the name of a little girl who died in 1999. She was probably just a little younger than DS is now. She was the daughter of a massage therapist where I work, and I don't think I ever knew about this until today. I just know him as a really nice single guy who does great massage. This of course goes to prove that each of us has a story that is deeper than anything we might have guessed through our casual everyday interactions.
And it also serves to prove that life isn't that bad for us right now. We may get mired down with concern and confusion about diabetes, and how things will pan out, the expense of the insulin and supplies and how totally crappy our insurance is, etc. Really what we need to focus on is just how truly lucky we are. No, let's take luck out of it. Let's just say we realise just how blessed we are. Sure things are hard right now, but things are a damn sight harder for someone else at this moment somewhere.
Am I ranting? Maybe in a way. But it's not a bad rant, IMO. I need a poem, and intend to go searching for one.
Here we are:
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
* * *
Info on the Stair Climb, and the site for Cystic Fibrosis:
http://stairclimb.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=285455
(Also, be sure to click on In Memory of Jennifer Lynn Thanem...)
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