Wednesday, December 25, 2019

11:43 a.m. Today, we took a lovely early morning Christmas walk in our favorite cemetery, and I couldn’t have thought of a more fitting place. It may seem strange that I loved walking in a cemetery on Christmas Day, but to me, each gravestone stands for life, not death – life lived to the fullest as part of the endless cycles of life that never started and will never end. Yes, there seems to be what we call ‘death’, but to me, this ‘death’ is simply the cycles of life rolling and shifting and transforming – never beginning and never ending. When I look up at clouds in the sky, they do seem to be separate and solid, just as my body seems separate and solid, but clouds are always shifting and blending and totally transforming, and so are our bodies – and our lives. The gravestones in the cemetery merely stand for one of the infinite shiftings Life has undergone in its timeless – and endless – journey through the universe. For a few years, these were humans among other humans, and now they may be breezes in a southern sky, or small sprouts of flowers, or just helpful air filling someone’s lungs – good things to think about during a Christmas walk in Elm Grove Cemetery.

This evening, we watched another wonderful version of “A Christmas Carol”, made in 1951 and starring Alistair Sim. I think we both loved it, especially the ending, when Scrooge joyously celebrates his newfound wisdom, telling his housekeeper that he now understands that he understands nothing, an insight – and a happy one – that I have had about myself more and more frequently as the years pass.