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| From flickr user Lisa Edmonds |
His hands are worn, hard, and calloused. Years of hard work, years of life, have chiseled and formed those hands like water shapes the rocks.
He looks used, poured out, radiant, and magnificent. He looks like he has lived for 100 years. He looks like he has seen his children grow, his grandchildren grow, and his great-grandchildren grow.
I gazed at him and I realized that before I leave this world I want to be that. When I leave this world I want to be used up and poured out. It will be my time to go once I have emptied all of myself into this world.
We can often try to hide from life. Trying to keep ourselves within ourselves. Trying to keep our wineskins full. Trying to insulate ourselves from life. We hide within the mundane. We coat ourselves in the armor of indifference. We fear true open life and love. We are often as likely to experience pain as joy from love, and that is all right. That is part of the fabric of life. If you hide yourself from life you are still going to die. The world fills our lives with pain and loss. The world fills our lives with joy and beauty.
The world is real and stark and true and painful and glorious. It’s not just that all this stuff is inevitable so we just need to live with it. This stuff is magnificent . It is the holy weave that makes up the tapestry of our lives. Life isn’t about being happy all the time. Life is about living.
When you pour yourself out into something meaningful family, art, hard work, the earth, you become whole