let it come

this morning the walk up monkey hill was cool and sunless.  it was that beautiful coldish air that comes with a gray sky and at the top- everything was white.  the hills were covered, the city blocked, the view whited out - like snow.  beautiful like i was looking out into a snowy sky. a sky that is blanketed, that brings quiet- that some days- you need. and today i needed that external boundary to bring internal stillness.

i always wonder, when i walk up places to get perspective and solitude, what will come. 

and that is what came. that was the lesson that descended from that white sky. let it come.

what if life, as it is, when it is, is just what is need. what if i trusted enough in the orchestration of things, that whatever befalls me in the day, is what should come.  what if instead of telling the universe what i can and can't handle this week, i could flip it around, and believe that what comes my way this week, or morning, or minute- is exactly what i need- what i can bear- what i should experience? 

it's easy here to become bogged down in the amount of stuff one could do or be involved with.  it's easy for my walks up monkey hill to be full left brain exercises in planning how to do many things- or the order in which to do them- or even to brainstorm solutions that will solve all the worlds problems (haha).  but.  we can't do all that.  i can't do all that.

but i can do what is in front of me.  i can help the one in my path, the one knocking on my door at 8pm at night, the one asking for some money.

it's easy for me to be annoyed by the people and the things that seem to get in the way of my big plans. 

oops. that defeats the purpose.  that really makes no sense.  that is definitely not what Jesus did.

it's in the small things that are brought before us- it is those whose lives touch ours- it is what comes to us- that is where our opportunity to serve happens- to do- to influence; and more importantly to be influenced ourselves. 

in our days, lay hiding, treasures of opportunity.  people and places, and sounds and the colors of the sky- that will speak if we listen- that will meet us just where we are- just where we should be.

if we can just let it come.

contemplating

today i bumped along an african dirt road and thought about the last 24 hours that started with me watching 'midnight in paris' and feeling happy and removed - back in time and place- recounting my first trip to paris, and my second and third and missing that youth and freedom. 

then i woke up to two little boys snuggling under our mosquito net with the sound of a rooster in the next yard and felt blessed and thankful. 

then i groggily roused myself from bed, had a cup of coffee and got on line to read a facebook entry from an old friend.  it said, 'i've started a blog....'.  the blog is called 'the young and the breastless' and the first sentence reads, "so i have breast cancer." (the young and the breastless- check it.)  it was a total shock.  i read her first post and i laughed and i cried and then i moped around for the next few hours.  she is incredible.  smart, beautiful, successful, blessed with her own lovely family, with an amazing sense of humor and attitude, but next week, just before her 40th birthday, she will have both her breasts removed.  i always thought this would be me.

my mom had breast cancer at 35, my grandmother at 45, so when i turned 20 i began to wait for my inevitable fate, assuming that at possibly 25 i'd loose a breast or even two. but.  i haven't yet had to write those words.  each annual mammogram i wait for the results, sure that this next one will be the one and i go through the first sentence of my first blog post and it usually begins with ...so i have breast cancer, because how else do you out yourself? 

today another friend is in a hospital going through her first of three days of cycle two of chemotherapy for metastatic cancer. 
last week i found out two friends are getting or just got divorced. 
two weeks ago another friends child was fighting for life from complications from leukemia.
one week ago another friend would have celebrated his 41 birthday, except he's not here to celebrate it.

this is where we are in life.  we are in the thick of it.  we've been educated, we've sowed some wild oats, we've found our life partners, we've been promoted, we've had our babies, bought houses, trained dogs, weaned our babies, potty-trained them, started them in school, been promoted again, had anniversaries, had our parents get sick, begun to wrinkle and sag, found some reasonable form of exercise to combat the wrinkle and sag, and now we've started going to the doctor for our 'healthcare maintenance' and are finding out we're sick.  now we're looking at our partners and saying, is this the rest of my life? or people are straying and the pieces are too broken to be put back together.  this is where we are.
ugh.

i bumped along this road, kiyumba road in mukono, half dirt and half paved, children played in ripped clothes outside of mud houses, pushing along an old bike wheel with a stick like a turn of the century painting.   i thought about how they landed here with out any choice- with out an option for education, with out time or money to sow wild oats (two busy sowing real oats), with no promotions, lots of babies, no houses, lots of sickness and no healthcare maintenance.  this is their life.

i thought about how i always knew, since i was 14 and went to pucapla peru, that this would be my life- red dirt and dust and roadside trash and tin roofs and bedraggled children and the smell of things burning, always.  i thought about my kids in the back seat and how they didn't sign up for this- they didn't see it coming. they were born in san francisco.  they learned japanese in public kindergarten and ate sushi and french croissants and hiked the sweet smelling hills of marin and wore expensive french leather sandals.  i thought about their big eyes looking out that window and wondered what their brains are doing with all of it. 

this is our life.
at 41- here.  at 39 having chemo.  at 39 saying goodbye to the parts that nursed your babies, at 40 rediscovering life without your life partner, at 4 and 6 wrestling with disparity, at 4 suffering from cancer (?), at 41 having a child with cancer.

last night i skyped with people, family and friends and i felt so close and so far away.  today, i just felt far away- but rightly far.  far where i am to be for now- wide eyed children and all.  today i finished reading 'the kite runner' and was blown away again by the sickness of war and of how desperately and irrevocably people can hurt each other.

they are all pieces of life.  scattered around the world we all are.  in the middle, in the thick of it. 
bumping along our roads- half heavy, half light.