Today in chapel I was challenged with a message of humility. Later on, I was told, when tempted to judge that I should ask myself, "What can I learn from you? What is it about your beautiful self that can teach me grace?"

Sometimes I'm afraid I will be forgotten. That I myself am forgettable. But I think we're all worth remembering; i.e. not even a single sparrow falls to the ground without the Father's knowing. But what kind of remembering will people have of me? I suppose I'd rather they remember my feeble attempts at friendship than those parts of me I wish would rather not exist. But I'm sure that I will be remembered, if at all, as myself as a bundle of paradoxes, as a very imperfect yet grace imbued girl. And this grace not of myself.

Sometimes I'm just flabbergasted by the speed of thoughts, of tears, of laughter, of words, of images, of affection. And then I grow melancholy. I grow melancholy because I fear my lack of love; I grow melancholy as I realize what treasures await us each gracious moment, and how just as quickly as they are revealed they are buried again. I grow melancholy when I think of things I wanted to say, or should have said, or shared, or prayed, or written.
But, there is joy in all of these things, and ever new delights are given to us: in the people we are given to love and honor, in the merciful hum of each new day dawning, in the dance of light and white dots of night, in the feeding of birds and of the throwing of snow, in cards and calls of 'this is the good I see in you, that God is drawing out of you', in the 'knowing' that is made possible among close friends, of how and why one is feeling.
Oh, to live in gratitude for these things, and not to mourn unduly the loss of what we were given for just a short time. But to celebrate it, and to celebrate the legacies we leave each other.

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

Joshua Abraham Heschel