"Endless beginnings"

Irina's post over at The IgNoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!: A Double Take challenged some of my own conceptions of life. What do I want from life? I've always improvised the answer, and the question for that matter.

She talks about the risk of relationships that "(deteriorate) into a habit and friendly affection" and has a healthy ambivalence regarding, "drinking weak tea with some toothless old guy fifty years from now." I have to say, I love the imagery in that particular scenario. But a life filled with the ordinary has the opportunity to be, just the same, a continuous sequence of endless beginnings.

I tied my fate to a woman who had layers of mystery to me, in a long ago age when I was an awkward goofy looking skinny guy in a Planters Peanut tuxedo, and my wife was a scared looking bride in a perm of a kind they don't do anymore. Although neither of us were religious at the time, we hired a minister to perform our wedding, because grandparents and relatives would like it that way. And I am grateful for this, in particular, because God has walked our long way with us.

I have seen a million sunrises and sunsets since that wonderful day. I have sat out on the rocks at Salmon point with her, staring at a night sky impossibly bright with the distant life-creating energies of the milky way. I have felt my heart sing with a joy I cannot even write of what it is to be in the presence of a blue baby newly entered into the world - it is like an audience at the throne of God! I've seen my daughter's prom dress; and I've seen gratitude on the face of this daughter when finishing high school successfully resulted in a Playstation 2!

I've shared the awful heartbreak of watching my wife and brother in law return from trying to deliver my sister in law to the hospital to save her, and making it only about half way before it was too late. I've watched their faith grow as they struggle to understand that she is in their lives still, even if from a more distant vantage point. I've watched my mother sit in total quiet with a minister, while the rain tapped the windows, as she came to terms with burying her mother. And I've watched my own faith grow as I learn to accept that we are not planted to take root in this Earth forever.

Every day brings a new colour into my life. I don't get to travel to new geographic locales every day, but I do get to go new places I've never been, and I do that almost every day. And, if we scrimp and save, we travel in the non-metaphorical sense, too! And taking in the newer world of a child, through the eyes of your own children – whale watching, sailing – this too is an endless beginning. So is love. My wife is still a woman of mystery to me; for even though I know as much as it is possible to know about which way her sails carry her, I still only guess it right about half the time. And it is wonderful to still learn about her.

Every new thing can take you back to your own beginnings, when you realize that you are in these beginnings, and every new thing's beginnings are in yours. This wonder with which we achingly and tentatively seek to connect, like Adam with his hand extended in Michaelangelo's fresco, was born for us. And we were born for it.

Endless beginnings abound, even in the comfort of endless routine. I know, because I live there. :-)