My agent/daughter Julie informed me on my return from the monastery retreat that I was now a published blogger. All that means is that she has shared my blog site with family and friends making it official: I am obligated to write. My overachieving daughter is now overachieving for her mother. God love her.
The retreat stories can wait. I'm still processing the impact those few days had and hopefully will continue to have. Until those stories emerge, here's something that came to mind during my travels through train terminals. For you Saturday night fans from the 1990s, this will be sort of a "Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey" segment.
I recently read the nonfiction bestseller Same Kind of Different As Me. The author's wife, suffering from cancer, comes home distraught after someone she runs into while shopping mentions the wife's "terminal" illness. Though an honest remark, the word came across as tactless and hopeless. It is a word we usually associate with something that is about to end.
In the past year I've been in bus terminals, airport terminals, and train terminals--watched a lot of people. It occurred to me that terminals are a rotation of people arriving and people departing. It is not a place of endings--everyone is going somewhere. Life is, from our first breath, the leaving of one place to get to another. And immediately after taking that first breath, we are on our way to the moment to when we breathe our last. Arriving so that we can prepare to leave. There's your deep thought.
Being terminal describes all of us.
However, only a few fortunate souls figure that out (either while healthy or when facing a life-threatening illness). When and if we do, that word terminal opens doors to a life that is lived with meaning--which is what it is supposed to be! Living with meaning manifests itself in kindness, patience, joy, compassion, generosity, laughter, selflessness, tolerance, and two scoops of your favorite ice cream anytime you want it (another deep thought).
Whether we like it or not and whether we realize it or not, we are traveling to that ultimate Destination. I think Jack Handey might have said something like, "Open the door. Walk through the turnstiles. Get your ticket. And live." And if he didn't say it, I suspect St. Peter will.
