Celebrating Life

Life has been a continuing series of all too brief golden, magic, special moments that flee by as if being chased by unseen practical jokers.
A movie film, even a film strip or slides projected on a brilliant screen too fast to savor, too quick to study, too rapid to survey and inventory – nano second flashes that leave no time for the brain to form images or reach conclusions or draw summaries. But the recorded riches and lows are there filling up the file folder of life, being woven into the tapestry that is my biography.
And some I can catch as the time runs out, some I can retrieve as the allotted hours are exhausted: a birthday party when I lost my cowboy hat while playing and hiding on a warm sunny afternoon in mid summer; the Christmas I received my real drum; the rainy evening in May when I took Ursula to the prom and was dressed in a suit given to me by brother Bob; playing with the band at dances after basketball games; graduating from college, meeting Phyllis, our honeymoon, our new Honda. Tag coming home from Colorado; my first poem published; Susan’s independent spirit expressed re Sears’s photos; a good sermon preached well; a new vacation spot; a dinner with good friends; a party with relaxed people....insights, “a ha’s,” “wow’s,” flashes of the Holy Spirit; in touch with the divine; a piece of furniture refinished; a good, delicious meal prepared, ....deep, intimate contact of body and soul and spirit with kindred kind; – unreal, impossible, other worldly, yet vital..., and, the sweep second hand sweeps seconds off the face of the clock cleaning each minute before or as it passes and is gone.

Richard E. Lake