Photo by honor the gift, via Flickr
I feel a need to pause today and say thank you. On two separate subjects, actually.
From the moment we first realized we might have to take Michael early, people have been extending themselves for us. At first, we kept a list so we could send thank you notes, like, y’know, people are supposed to do. Like we’ve always done before. But before long, the stream of generosity outstripped our ability to keep track of it. In prayers, in child care, in child transport, in meals, in house cleaning, in hospital visits and meals brought there, in gifts and cards and help planning the baptism party, and simply in avid interest in our family’s story (my blog hits have been crazy high lately)–in all these ways, you people have blessed us. We owe one heck of a debt of karma on the universe, and I’m so excited to start paying it forward…because I know I can never pay it back.
And speaking of the blog, that brings me to the second topic: comments.
There are bloggers who respond to every single comment people leave, often simply saying “thanks for visiting!” I’ve never wanted to do that. As much verbiage as I spew, I like it to be meaningful. I’d rather have horizontal conversation with people. In other words, if I play arbiter to each and every response, it feels like I’m the great almighty Blogger before whom you all lay your burnt offerings of comments.
Not my style. I’ve got an ego, but I’m aiming myself at humility.
But if I don’t respond individually to a comment, that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant to me. I’ve always wished I had a way to personalize my comment box the way people on other platforms can. If I could, it would say something like this: Every comment you leave is like a piece of candy thrown to a child at a parade: a cause for delight and warm fuzzies in my chest. Affirmations lift me up; disagreements (respectfully phrased) promote understanding–and I love, love, LOVE to read your stories, when you share them. I can’t tell you how many times I wish I had a simple “like” button, because your words stand on their own and I would like to affirm them without drawing attention back to myself. Someday, when I graduate to a more sophisticated blogging platform than .com, I will make sure I have a way to do that.
In any case, as insufficient as this medium is, I would just like to say thank you to you all, from the bottom of my heart. Every day I understand better what Luke said in the infancy narrative: Mary kept all these things and treasured them in her heart. Sometimes that’s all you can do, because words are woefully insufficient.
Just before my alarm went off, 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I had the most amazing dream. We were attending Mass at the Newman Center, and singing the new Mass parts. They were chants, as a matter of fact, but the most gorgeous, melodic chants I’d ever heard, and expanded into gorgeously rich harmony that made the very air hum. And ringed around the exterior of the church stood dozens of people, children and adults, bearing small percussion instruments—agogô, cabasa, güiro, and others I know by sight and sound but for which I know no names. It was a tight ensemble; I looked around and marveled at the way even the children kept the complex rhythms locked to the voices, the joy filling up the space, and my heart lifted up in gratitude not only for the existence of God, but for the power of what He created here on Earth.
