[whilst paddling the Methow River last night: it was rapture]
I was stressing about something a few weeks ago, I can’t remember what exactly…oh, it was probably the broken water pipe at our Idaho house. The broken water pipe that had been broken for a month and a half (and wasn’t noticed by our friends who are living in our house), the broken pipe that sprayed approximately 120 000 cubic gallons of water into the foundation of our home (amazingly, there’s no damage to the house), the broken pipe that created a $650 water bill in the month of July. Yeah. That’s what I was stressing. Fret not, Robert was miraculously boosting the Pocatello satellite smokejumper base at the time and was able to deal with the issue in person! How’s that for providence? I was so thankful I didn’t have to deal with the situation. So thankful.
I was telling one of our best friends about the broken pipe and some other life stuff and at the end of a long dialogue he gifted me with these three, tiny words:
Smile. We’re alive.
Thank you, Sam.
After receiving that text, I shut off my phone and walked into the Pasayten Wilderness of Northern Washington and I did smile and I was alive and I am alive and it is beautiful…and everything else I could generally say about life that is good and true and honest and courageous at any given moment welled up out of my heart onto the tip of my tongue. Things like: God is always good, my heart is beating cosmic music that joins me with the rest of the planet and the galaxy and the universe, I am alone but I am not lonesome, I am tiny and important, these raspberries are delicious, the trout are leaping for joy and I’m going to catch them one by one…and so on and so forth…I said all those true things, spoke the words into thin air until I was filled up and surrounded once again with light instead of shadow. Once you let a simple truth resonate in your spirit, play you like a horse hair bow plays a violin, the seeds of joy and gratitude grow like wildfire.
Lately, I’ve been saying those easy, steady words to my friends when I think they need to be reminded of the simplest truth…they are alive and life is beautiful.
I’m saying to you, today, right now:
Smile. You’re alive. And it’s beautiful. Even I can see that from way over here. Put on your high beams and shine your light.
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