Everybody Should Get This

I’m headed back to real life today after a couple days celebrating HH’s 60th birthday in Vermont.  It was lovely.  We ate really good food.  We experienced God’s nature in technicolor.  We stared into space with few immediate worries. We worshiped with a church on Sunday that addressed important spiritual issues and nobody got angry/shot/banished.

At dinner last night, my sweet HH said, “Everybody should get this.”  He is right.

Everybody should get a vacation.  Everybody should get at least one standing ovation in life.  Everybody should get dessert after a great meal.  Everybody should get his birthday celebrated or her election honored.  Everybody should get to go to a peaceful protest without being shot at.  Everybody should get to drive in the wee hours – if we wish – without being shot at.  Everybody should get to play in a public playground without being shot at.  Everybody should get to make a living without getting shot at.

My heart is filled with gratitude.  I have married a generous person who loves me.  I have enough money to take a vacation.  I have healthy children who are happy and interesting.  I work with fantastic people.  I live in a house with air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter.  I have a cell phone, a laptop, a double-wide fridge, an extra bathroom, and a team of people who mow my big yard.  I am an enormously privileged human being.

Everybody should get this.  I reject the notion that – for me to “have this”  – some people are doomed to the poverty class.  This is not true.

Everybody should be treasured and well fed and rested and honored.  We are in big trouble, cosmically, if we don’t get this.