On Abundance

I don’t know which is more to be cherished, in this later winter season when so much in our world is topsy — the unexpectedly beautiful gifts that I have received these past few months, or the love behind them.  This amaryllis showed up on my doorstep in mid-December, a mottled bulb, accompanied by river stones and a graceful glass vase, from a poet with an exquisitely-tuned appreciation for nature’s abundant beauties.  Earlier, from another soulful artist, a hand-knit sweater.  An oxalis.  A box overflowing with fruits and cheese.

While the world has teetered on the brink of self-destruction, these extraordinary gestures have given me long pauses of wonder and gratitude.

Of course, my either-or question, ancient as it is, is a false one.  There can be no choosing between beauty and friendship.  Beauty, the great equalizer of all experience, is itself a form of cosmic friendship, whether it is natural or human made.  And friendship is the bloom that drives out loneliness, cold, fear and pain.

What has moved me, though, is the surfeit of generosity that I have experienced and witnessed during the past several months.  It is as if the public chaos and uncertainties have reset our inner barometers in ways that we have not yet recognized.  As if the bold outlines of our broken places are being answered by a different interior palette — one of hope, reassurance, peaceful creativity, and connection.

When I look down at the morning paper, or out into “the world at large,” my heart trembles, mightily.  But when I pull my gaze in and view my life at closer range, that view is astonishing.  I would say it is almost like being at the Louvre, except that it is miraculously right here, right now – beauty and friendship abundant.