One of our writing prompts today at our clergy writing group was from this “Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver:

And did you get what
you wanted from tis life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Which led me to this:

What do I want from life?  I think I may, at this point, have a clue.  If this life is, as I believe it is, fundamentally about being in relationship – learning to be in relationship with the other – then I want to build relationship.

And I think of relationship, most often, in connection with other people and with God.  Though I’m beginning to have a sense that all creation is connected and involved.  The animate and the inanimate.  All from God.  All a gift.

I might want to use the language of being cherished and cared for, and of cherishing and caring in my own life.  Which seems to me to be what this God of agape love both models (in trinity of persons and in incarnation) and demands (or at least invites) of us.

To actually see the other.  To value what they bring to creation.  To invite and value the use of their gifts.  To support them, in their struggles and joys.  That’s what I’m talking about.  Even the rocks can be a thing of beauty and utility – a thing of value.  What can I learn from the gift of a rock?  Brother Lawrence saw the whole world in a tree.

I don’t see it.  But I believe there is a unity and a connectedness in all creation which exists, perhaps, in the mind of God.  And which is there to be found.  And cared for.  And cherished.

I think that’s what I’d like, perhaps, from life.  To be cherished.  And cared for.  Only possible, I think, when the relationship is truly mutual.