James Finley says that all experience "arises, endures and passes away." It's the very nature of human experience, thought and language. Tonight, this night, it is as it has always been. Someday, not too far from now, I will miss all this. I'll miss the teenagers and their physics textbooks at the kitchen table. I'll miss their generous ways, encouraging, goofing off, figuring things out. And I'll miss the cold pizza layered on plates, even Justin Timberlake on the radio. I'll miss it all.
But tonight I watch, I pay attention, I give thanks: for all that's lovely and glorious and fleeting in my life. It is good here tonight--in this place, kids all over the house, studying for their tests, reading books in bed, looking forward to the rest of their lives. I hold all of it close, because it bears me, because it fills me, because it is my life.
And as I say goodnight, I give thanks to God for all the saints, for all the pilgrims, for all the artists who've pointed me in this direction. Let us love. Let us pay attention. And let us give it all away.
"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." --- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
