I can't speak for anyone else but I go through life with a sense of wonderment. The twists and turns of life, what brings you to a certain spot, how our lives intertwine all seem a mystery to me. I have often noted how blessed I am at how things have worked out, appreciating the fine details of my life. What role has kismet played? Kharma? Luck? Blessed by God? I can see myself as if I were a child, filled with awe and amazement at life and how it unfolds for us.
Yesterday I went to a service for the first feast day of Saint Paulette. Paulette was an Episcopal Priest and the wife of a fine gentleman that I had the pleasure of working with for many years. Here I found myself at this service, on what now seemed to be our very small island because it turns out I knew so many people in the church. Many had played roles in my own life. In fact, Mother Paulette herself had not only attended my Ordination celebration but was quite active in the LGBT community in the those early years of the so called "gay plague" and long before it was fashionable or acceptable for a church person to be ministering to people with AIDS. I would be remiss not to note though, AIDS seems exactly the kind of disease and the LGBTQ community is exactly the kind of people I know Jesus would reach out to and minister to but I digress.
In the sermon offered by an old friend of Paulette's, it was noted how beautiful she was as an individual. It was noted that it was not true that she could walk on water. Paulette's talents, generosity and journey were all noted in detail as were some of her faults lets say or perhaps more annoying gifts would be a better way to put it.
I came away really knowing who Saint Paulette was, a human fully alive. I knew I had been blessed in knowing her. I came away with that sense of awe again in how her life had intertwined with mine. Paulette's life had touched so many people that had touched me as well. I got to thinking how her love had perhaps been doing double duty, affecting my life in ways I never had known or realized. How blessed am I? How blessed are we all.
As with many things in life, I had gone to this celebration of Paulette for one reason, to support a man that I worked with and his family. I came away with that same old sense of awe and an ever growing sense of thankfulness. I came away gifted in a wholly unexpected way.
I give pause to think of Frank Capra's, It's a Wonderful Life and hum A Different Corner with George Michael ringing in my head. We go through life so blind and trying to control all the things that happen to us. We plan, God laughs my mother-in-law would say. How often do we really let go and let life unfold before us? How often do we realize the intense and awesome mystery of life that God lays out before us, meeting our one true love, offering us gifts that we never would have received had we not been at a given place at a given time.
I think all the goodness and gifts of our life are not accidents, not kismet, not kharma or even good luck. There are all examples of God reaching out to us through each other. Can we open our eye's to see these gifts as they unfold before us? When we accept God's love and share that love, fully alive, we are instruments of God, we are clay in her hands. In so doing we become saints like Paulette who so willingly and thoroughly offered her whole being to God. Paulette is a Saint and yesterday was her feast day.
