Bigger and bigger ... less and less

What a year!

In two weeks, I turn 50 years old. I suppose it's natural to turn around and look and take stock and wonder at things when a person is half a century old. It might even be necessary. There needs to be fifty years worth of proof or else no one would believe it of themselves - to be fifty! How is that possible? It turns the brain poetic to turn fifty. It makes a person say things like, "Yesterday - yeah ... it was just yesterday," and mean that it was more than three decades ago. And then the brain freezes for a second, like a wild animal that's just heard a sound that might be a threat, and the brain listens, and the brain wonders how it is possible to even remember something that happened decades ago. Scent the wind, listen again ... okay, okay ... yeah, I'm still okay ...

About three decades ago, someone wrote me a poem like that. He compared me to a trusting doe, getting up to meet the dawn and being fearless in vulnerability. I think he saw more of me than I knew about myself - it's true of all of us. The big, wide world - and the hunter's gun - it's so much more dangerous than we realize when we're young. But, it's also more glorious, and more enormous, and more amazing, and more beautiful.

That's what I think about as I approach this half-century mark. My world has gotten bigger and bigger. I love it more and more. But I own it less and less. My part is to be part of it now. I think that's funny - odd, I mean. It's an intriguing thought. The more I know about the dangers or the hugeness, the less I worry about the hunter's gun.

A few weeks ago, we had a house guest. He is a man who has seen his buddies die on the battlefield, and has come close to it himself, on too many occasions. He said something rather amazing. He said, "If this is all I ever have, it will be enough - because this is good."

Yeah.

What he said.