Reflection:

Celebrated my 56th birthday this week. It was a quiet family affair after my 5-hour drive home from the coast. Bill, Angus and I ate takeout barbeque ribs and stuck a candle in a delicious lemon icebox pie. Angus loves the candle bit and helps to blow it out no matter whose day it is! Liam was at school and forgot to call but we talked later and agreed to a raincheck.

My running joke for birthday greetings is: “Beats the alternative!” Gallows humor is something I learned from my mother.

In most circumstances, being alive for another year beats being dead and having no more years. As a minister, I am painfully aware that this does not hold true in every situation. So far, thankfully, for myself, I would much rather be here than not, and that means enduring the ebb and flow of life and the effects of time and gravity.

I heard astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently talk about how very unlikely it is that any of us exists. There are so many variables that have to happen JUST RIGHT for any one of us to arrive in this world. That we can open our eyes every morning and breathe in and smile (or growl) is really so very close to miraculous that a little thankful nod to the mystery of the universe while we brush our teeth would not go amiss!

Here we are! Another day! Beats the alternative!

In wisdom and grace,

Rev. Ruth