Kelly Corrigan: An Excerpt

Today was a slow day at work, and as I perused the internet for interesting items to entertain myself with, I came across this passage in an essay written by Kelly Corrigan and published in O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine (May 2008). It gave me goosebumps.

If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water.

But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful?

The entire essay is brilliant. You can find it here: http://blog.kellycorrigan.com/2008/05/doubt-inside-my-doubt.html

Humo(u)r

Things that make me laugh...

(This may only be funny to New Yorkers... I don't know how vibrant the hipster community is in the rest of the country and the world.)

The quote of the day: "Isn't it odd that the most serious things are the funniest things? Death and sex especially" - Peter Kreeft

In honor of...

As usual, my family had to do without me for Thanksgiving dinner. What they missed the most, I'm sure, is my possesiveness over the coveted squash casserole. Every year I fight over the largest helping with my Uncle Wes, and try to position the dish close to my seat at the table for optimum scooping opportunities. In any case, this is how my family chose to honor me and mark my absence on Thanksgiving:

For the record, I detest that photo. Which is probably why they chose to use it. Tonight I'm making three cheese baked ziti, using a recipe my brothers tried out this summer. If I can't make it as well as they did I'll be humiliated. Of course I'll be making it on significantly less sleep, therefore with less brainpower. Eight hours of sleep in 48 hours is not a good ratio.

I'll leave you with this, today's comic from my favorite webcomic ever: www.marriedtothesea.com. I particularly appreciate this one.

Simple pleasures

Last week my friends were discussing simple pleasures. For example, the pop that ensues when you open a sealed jar, or the smell outside after it rains. Well one of my simple pleasures is checking this website: http://foundmagazine.com/

Some of my favorites from FoundMagazine.com:

Nude L's?

Love this

Uh oh

A good reminder

Angry messy grief

I don’t do funerals. I don’t grieve ceremoniously or corporately. When I grieve, it’s messy, and there’s no make-up involved, but there usually are a lot of cigarettes. So this weekend I’ll be going to a wedding, not a funeral. Not because I’m running away, but because I’m facing what must be faced in my own way… with my iPod turned up as I chase five hundred miles of highway in the opposite direction of the funeral. And this weekend I will laugh and I will shed tears and I might not be sure why, or which is which at any given moment. But that is my mourning.

My uncle’s words, written mere hours after losing his wife:

“Where do I stand now? I am DEFIANT! I hate cancer and all other sickness now more than ever. I expect divine justice to give me back seven-fold or more in healings what I have lost tonight. I am even more determined that what I saw tonight, droplets of blood spraying from Vicki’s nose and mouth as she breathed her last breath, was not God’s will – it’s what Jesus died for in our place. I will not make peace with the enemy of eternal life (sin) or with the enemy of physical life (sickness) and call it God’s will. I will call it mystery – the secret things of God that I do not understand (Deut.29:29), but I will not accept it as some heavenly ‘status quo’."

Until I read these words I had nowhere to place the anger I feel in response to this – yet another – monstrous hit to my family. I tried to place it on God, but I couldn’t, because I couldn’t escape my belief that he is good. And so I carried it until the truth of these words pierced me. Now I see clearly that I am angry towards an enemy which is constantly present yet already defeated. I am angry at this disjointed world, operating contradictorily from the way it was meant to. I am angry because I’m stuck in a temporary existence and it hurts, and I long for the eternal fulfillment my aunt stepped into last night.