Beauty

OK, it's not as if I haven't posted beautiful pictures from the deck of the St. John's Club before, and yet here's another one.  It really hit me last night how blessed I am, and what a beautiful life I lead.  This is something I meditate on when I'm praying because I want to keep it in my mind all the time.  Prayer is a tricky thing (at least for me) and it took me a long time to come to peace with it.  I don't think that God (He/She/It/They, depending upon your own belief system) is so vain and/or insecure that He/She/It/They needs you to tell Him/Her/It/Them how great they are all the time. Nor do I view God as my equivalent to Amazon.com, which runs the risk of turning prayer into an exchange - and we already commodify enough in our misguided and short-sighted lives.  Eventually I've reached the point where I view prayer as a meditative practice, and a big part of it for me is to focus on what I, personally, need to work on, but also to always take time to focus on what I have.  Marcus Aurelius pointed out that if everything in your stupid life disappeared tomorrow - the very things you gripe about on a regular basis - think how you would beg to have them all back again.  Not to sound too much like Lester Burnham from American Beauty, but the older I get, I guess naturally, I try and think more about the things in my stupid little life.  So, last night was just another night at the SJC, replete with old friends (Mike, Sanford, Debbie, Steve, Kerry, Kevin), new friends (Alice), good news (Andy and Heidi are coming back in August) and my son looking happier than I can remember (and not simply because I bought him a membership to the St. John's Club), and it all came together to remind me how lucky I am.

And speaking of American Beauty, from the first time I saw it I always felt a greater kinship with the weird neighbor kid fixated on beauty than the middle-aged guy dreaming of cheating with the cheerleader.