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Surprise yourself
And know that everything is surprising
I nearly titled this nascent essay something along the lines of Lurching towards Bethlehem, modeled roughly after Joan Didion’s 1968 essay collection titled Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which I in this moment discovered, is modeled (in turn) on the last line of W.B. Yeats’ 1919 poem The Second Coming.
Lurching is a rather different word to slouching. Slouching is relatively static. Lurching conveys forward momentum, albeit painful, staccato, frightening. In the decades since first hearing the phrase in Mr. Killian’s English class in 1986 (as he told of his undying affection for the great Joan Didion), my mind morphed it to “Lurching Towards Bethlehem,” and I’ve often applied it to myself and my own efforts at fumbling toward grace.
Reaching, missing, grasping, missing, and occasionally finding and holding for a few blissful moments a kind of radiance, that feeling one gets in life that all is well, no, not well — divine. Ecstatic. Sublime. When anxiety falls away, leaving confidence and trust, a kind of knowing that life is friendly, that all is okay, that no matter what happens, all is well.
It will do me good to remember this today and in the days to come.
It will be good to step away, gaze fondly at myself and my human foibles, and remember the…
