Sixty

the REST of the week #163

Dear reader, I am sixty years old.

What a gift that my birthday fell a few days after Daniel’s graduation—during our brief stay here in the U.S. where I have been surrounded by loved ones.

In the midst of war and widespread suffering, we take all the love and joy and little gifts we can get. We gratefully open our hearts to receive, knowing that this is the work of rest, that as long as we are receiving, we may give without being depleted.

And there is so much to receive for God is ever at work in and around us.

As part of a special celebration marking my milestone birthday, my sister, Darchelle, read this poem Halleluiah by Mary Oliver:

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

May you rest from the trudging—and feel your wings.

And may your rest be sweet.

Alicia