Caterwauling

So I finally got my copy of “One Month to Live” today. So far, it’s nothing exotic or anything I haven’t heard/thought before. But, you know. It gives this whole “Live Like You Were Dying” experiment a whole new level of commitment.

I had an errant concern this morning, revolving around parting words, so to speak. As in, who can I not leave this earth without talking to, one last time?

I don’t mean saying goodbye. I’m not good at ’em anyway and I sure as hell don’t want to say another one if I can help it. I mean saying something that you’ve bottled up for so long that it might just be emanating from your pores if someone would just look closely enough.

I had two quick thoughts on that matter — the first is that there may be one person to whom I would have to say sorry that you’re going to have to go through an entire lifetime of not having me in it. That, I don’t know if you were waiting for any time in particular to wake up and smell the cat poop, but time’s running out. Can a girl die happy? (Mercy sex is fine, too — I’m in no position to be picky if I’m dying here!)

Of course, would I really be ready to hear, “Not no, but HELL no?” in my fragile condition? Not really. Which is why I haven’t made any moves to find out either way, with presumably another 50 or 60 years left to live.

The other quick thought was to pick up the phone and beat someone else with it. Hell, I have 30 days to live — why not spend the last one as gleefully as possible, ridding the world of pestilence? Of course, that would mean I’d be joining them in hell.

And that ain’t the point of the exercise, as it’s to ultimately get closer to God, not push myself further away from Him. Love thy neighbor and all that jazz. Even and ESPECIALLY if they don’t deserve it.

Besides, who wants to waste their last days focused on, well, bullshit? Today’s message is one of rediscovering passion — of not spending so much time on the things that don’t matter and instead re-allocating one’s resources to what, ultimately, you’re in this world to achieve/leave behind.

They said something absolutely fascinating at church today — I actually wrote it down and shoved it in my purse so I could put it on the blog so I can refer back to it for the rest of my life:

God gave you enough hours in a day to do His work; he did NOT give you enough to do what everyone ELSE expects of you.

To quote the illustrious Chevy “Clark Griswold” Chase, “Hallelujah and holy shit!”

Think about it — there’s ample time for you to earn a living, take care of your relationships, have some fun AND to talk to God.

That actually made me cry when I heard it.

The problem is, we all make choices. We all schedule ourselves to death, just so we don’t fail to meet people’s expectations. Whose expectations, though? Not God’s. Mostly, not even our own.

I mean, it’s not that work can run late and you can tell your boss, “Sorry, that project ain’t happening. Me and God have a hot date.” (Tempting …) Or that I’d much RATHER have tickets to an upcoming concert that I would very much enjoy but that money is going to be directed to giving someone else what THEY want and my “me” time is just that — all in airquotes.

Basically, I am finally getting that whole “Your body is a temple” concept. Granted, I’ve treated mine like a Roman temple (read: vomitorium) for the past 33 years. But I see now that it’s one’s physical AND emotional health that makes him or her a better servant to God.

There’s a book that came to my attention, “Margin” by Richard Swenson, that basically nails people like me for having no “margins” in their life — i.e., white space. No spaces between the words in my book — just go-go-go-go-go.

I have four calendars to keep all of my events in order. I have event tickets and meeting notes and e-mails and reminders all over the damn place — I have CHURCH scheduled into my calendar, fer crying out loud. CHURCH! (At least it’s recurring. …)

I don’t know. A part of me wonders “what’s in it for me?” when I think about this life … that I have to fight tooth and nail for any table scrap representing peace of mind. But I guess the whole idea from this reading adventure I’m on is to stop fighting so hard against the tide — that if I go with it, it will take me places I might not have imagined.

I guess it’s true — whenever I accept things and stop being angry about something or other, my life always pulls a Madonna. Off come the jelly bracelets and on comes the cone bra — I get reinvented in less fashionable ways, but you get the idea.

But it’s so hard NOT to fight, you know? It’s like my inability to carry Mace because I like to spray it on random people just because I can. 🙂 It’s hard sometimes to say, “God’s fighting this battle for me” or “God will bring me through this,” but it has always been the case … even if I didn’t believe in God at the time (as there were many years of that), He seems to have had WAY more faith in me throughout it all.

So, I guess my next goal is to somehow break up the jam-packed pages with margins and white space and spend some time with the Big Dude by way of giving a reprieve to lil’ ol’ me sometimes.

Wow, a goal I actually WANT to achieve! Blessed be, indeed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 3:11 PM and is filed under Existential Meanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.