Friday, December 28, 2018

Unbidden

It’s Christmas morning. I am alone. Well not exactly, the three wise men are here. The Magi are my only decorations. With them, I see the sunlight, and am embraced by the silence. The morning casts a spell, and I fall into a reverie. I find myself thinking about the many gifts I have received over the course of this lifetime. Gifts, I didn’t even know were coming, and sometimes, didn’t even recognize until much later. They all came unbidden.

I could easily say the best gifts are unexpected ones. Life is full of them. This morning I’m noticing.  Gratitude is toothless, until it recognizes the great flow that keeps coming towards us. It is amazing! A friend was describing watching the growth of his infant grandson, he observed this child learning to reach for something. Each movement revealed possibilities, which eventually led the child to be able to touch what it desired. The Life coursing through that child organized itself into action and eventual mastery.
Fulfillment, like desire, is a gift that comes naturally. Life is like that, it keeps delivering.

Strangely, while sitting here, all alone, I am able to grasp perhaps the greatest gifts of all — the things, sometimes they are only feelings, that alter the course of my life. All of them have been unexpected miracles. Some have been wrapped in grief and pain. I didn’t want those gifts. They came all the same. Twisting me all around, giving me a perspective I wouldn’t have sought out. I’ve seen some light, and it isn’t always fun. But, it is always educative. I’m better able to reach now.

The unbidden has been my benefactor and my bane. Life wouldn’t be life without the surprises, that show me how off balance I am. What flows toward me is always more than I can handle, and it introduces me to myself. Talk about a gift! I am not just what I imagine.

Neither are you. If I’m willing to know it, like I am today, then I am confronted by another surprising gift. Loneliness has its benefits. The view can be breathtaking. Unbidden, a vision can come. All of a sudden, a lonely reverie can turn into an important moment, a surprise recognition. Life, we know, works in strange ways. Unbidden, Mystery walks in the door, invisible but palpable — light afoot, with heavy consequence.

Everything changes, and nothing changes. I am alone as ever, and I am full of an emptiness I can’t understand, or command. And, its spilling everywhere. Unbidden, my life is being swept into the unimaginable. 

The gifts I have received have altered me, they have overwhelmed me, short circuiting some of my dreams, and made me recall others. Unbidden, comes the recognition that I am being cared for, that the Universe is doing a job on me, and that something greater than the Christmas Spirit is goosing me on. I sit and marvel, and wonder, how could I do anything else, and then I do. Unbidden.

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