On Thursday afternoon I drove to pick up my kids from their two different high schools. I picked up Aislynn first and then drove to get my son. I pick him up on a side street several blocks away from the school since, without busing as a possibility here in CA, every other kid is also being picked up at the school and it is a complete zoo. I had driven our electric car to the place where I pick him up. In this car, the front door has to be open in order to open the back door to let someone into the back seat (it's a dumb design, but there it is). Aislynn opened the front door and before we could open the back door a dog ran over to the car and put his big head in Aislynn's lap. I said "hello, friend!" to the dog and reached over to scratch his head. After I scratched his head, though, he then decided that he was going home with us and he tried to jump into the car, into my lap, crossing over Aislynn. At that moment two women who'd been walking nearby ran over, asked us if the dog was ours, and said they were on a mission to find the dog's owners since they'd found the dog wandering around by himself in the next block over. "No, it's not our dog." I said, to which one of the women responded, "Well, he clearly WANTS to be your dog!" before she helped pull the dog out of our car so my son could get into the back seat and we could head home. The dog was very resistant to being pulled out of the car, and it seemed to me that he kept looking at me with a pleading in his eyes that was not unmoving to me. If we did not have three cats, I would have offered to bring the dog home until the owners could be located, and might even have adopted him if the owners couldn't be found .
The next morning I learned that the head priest of our local large Catholic parish was killed in a car accident that same afternoon (about a half hour before I was picking up my son). I knew this man. Not well, but we both were part of a local clergy group and I am the pianist for the choir at the Catholic parish that sings for memorial services. Since it is a very large parish, they have memorial services on a weekly basis (the choir doesn't sing for all of them, but many of them) so I am at the church, often playing for services over which he has presided, on a very regular basis.
Both of these incidents: the death of the priest, and the encounter with the dog, are very present in my mind. I realize these two incidents cannot be compared in terms of gravity, importance or seriousness. The loss of Father Mat is a huge, incomprehensible, deep loss for several large communities of people. It is tragic and devastating in so many ways. I spent much of the weekend talking with people who have been personally and deeply affected by this tragedy, and I imagine that these conversations will continue over the next few weeks and even months. In contrast, the incident with the dog is only present in my own mind. It is small. I am hopeful that the dog's owner was found, and that the dog is happily back with his people. I met this dog for all of five minutes and will probably never encounter the dog again.
And yet, still, both of these incidents are strongly with me.
To me they are both moments that emphasize how fragile and unpredictable life is. Everything can change in a moment. Life can be lost, devastation can occur, tragedy can hit in a second and the worlds of many people can be changed, instantly.
At the same time, and what we notice with less intensity, less interest even, is that there are new friends to be made, new encounters and new opportunities, new "openings" of our minds, our thoughts, our experiences - all of these also can occur in a moment.
Losses are often instant.
Unexpected gifts of encounter or opportunity or new connection are also often instant.
There is a difference. Usually, we have no choice about the losses. Often there is nothing we can do to control what losses come and how they change our lives. We can choose how to walk through them, but we cannot control whether they come. People die. People leave us. Life happens and others make choices that affect us in ways we cannot predict, cannot control and cannot prevent. In contrast, gifts must first be seen, and second, accepted, if we are to allow them to change us, move us, and help us to become better, fuller, and richer. Both the losses and the gifts call us to make decisions. Will we accept with grace what life has to offer us this day, and what will that look like in this particular moment? We don't control if they come, when they come, or how they come. We can only take what this life hands us and decide what we will do with what we are given in each moment, each day, each life-time.
Today I find myself grieving. But I am balancing that with the memory of the gifts that also come suddenly and unexpectedly. I am easing my own sense of loss by remembering the encounter with a friendly dog who instantly loved us and wanted to be with us. Does it make the grief go away? Of course not. But it does remind me that life is more than just the losses. It is deeper than just the grief. Life gives and life takes. God is in both, walking with us, grieving with us, and celebrating with us, too. In that realization I find peace, even when the healing has not yet come; and I find promise, even though the path through grief is often steep and long. I am grateful for the journey, even when the road is rough, even as I remember how fragile and unpredictable life really is.
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