The beginning of love is to let those we love to be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton
Summer 2011, I took a road trip to Kentucky. The solo return from the conference in Louisville brought visits to diverse places: bourbon distilleries and the Abbey where Merton spent his last days. On that drive home I realized how lucky I was to be make choices for myself and that it was important to afford the people I love: family and friends those same choices. Quite frankly, out of concern, I haven’t always been successful in “letting loved ones be perfectly themselves”. Who has? Even in the years that have followed I’ve slipped in ‘wanting’ for friends and family. . . out of love. It’s a goal to remember that others are on their own journey, not a reflection of mine.
Over this last month, the compassionate words of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s have re-resonated. “The purpose in life is not to win. The purpose in life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people’s lives.” In the mid-80’s I recall reading his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Simple. Straight-forward. Thirty years ago, I was a twenty-five year old deciphering the ‘whys’ of my mother’s untimely death. She was not much older than I am now.
Grow. Share. Forgive. Love. Carpe Diem.
None of us can escape sorrow. We grieve the loss and carry with us the joy. I learned that from my mother.
January 2015 will go down as a month of certain (and often uncertain) plate-spinning. We all have some creative “circus days” 
in life. My mother called it handling life with ‘style and grace’. She was a master at “plate-spinning” and “circus days”. The epitome of style and grace. It, like wisdom, comes with age.
I didn’t understand what she meant by “this too, shall pass”. Now, I do. With style and grace.
BethSings 