Goodnesses

It is almost eleven and I am squandering a perfect opportunity for an early turn-in. But I feel jumpy and weighted at the same time. I can't stop thinking about my dear friend--a sister, really, who is going in for surgery tomorrow. She has been ill for a long time now though her faith and spirits have kept her incredibly well. I just wrote her an e-mail and the words of Julian of Norwich came to me, words that often visit me in times of uncertainty: "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." In accepting this truth, I am not shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Everything will be fine." I realized long ago that everything is sometimes not fine, and there is no promise of easiness. But J. of N.'s words hit me deeply and profoundly: let go; there is much you can't see; all, all will be well, child.

So then I browsed through some pictures of our most recent hike and remembered how wonderfully refreshing and magic it was to walk under rhodedendrons in the rain, over rocks grown with moss to the edge of a valley rolling in fog. It was almost too much to take in. Then I went back to a book I wrote a while ago and lifted a passage for tonight, about goodness and wellness and the promise of grace.

There are goodnesses that astound. My mother’s arms. A tree in autumn, lit up as if encased in fire. The smell of rain creeping up the pavement. My father’s soft white hair. My husband’s hands. A good glass of wine. Bach. A piece of art that makes you feel as if you have seen it before, a million times.
The tug at your nipple, your milk flowing into your child’s mouth. The turning of a hennaed, bangled hand, the flowers it paints in the air. Faces that sing the same words as I, though they are a different color and from a different place.

Chocolate cake! Your own bed at the end of the day. Warm water falling over you when you have been very cold. The end of winter. Home, wherever and whomever that is, the way it waits for you like a mother.