We don’t get up early enough. We don’t play with the kids enough. We don’t walk on the grass enough, we worry too much about losing. We don’t throw the ball enough, hike through the woods, climb the low trees, eat fruit off the vine, go for a drive. We don’t tell enough stories, listen to records, dance for no reason at all. We don’t call old friends who are hard to find, aunts and uncles who made us laugh, stay longer with our parents talking about the times we had, talking about the rain. Talking. We don’t journey enough to places close by, we don’t find beauty in what there is plenty of, we don’t appreciate what is common, we don’t celebrate what is in our grasp. We’ve lost the art of contemplation, of solitude, of fasting, of quiet walks. We forget the world exists in each step, the saints and martyrs, philosophers and missionaries walk with us, whisper about the temporal state of life, the immortal flight of a bird. Life is the way we sit around and laughed till two. Life is the feet on the coffee table, the tie undone, the kids asleep in their beds. Life is the sound of water in a pool, the sound of tea poured into china cups, the sound of distant thunder at dusk. Life is unwrapped gifts, cards in the mail, the smell of bacon on Sunday morning; drinking beer with friends on Friday night, the first cold day in autumn we need to wear a sweater, life is the spring grass showing beneath the melting snow. It’s the mother in the door waving to her youngest child moving away. It’s the father at the observation deck waving to his son on the plane. It’s the letting go of small hands; it’s the giving away of the bride, it’s the days that pass without a phone call.

Life is the distance between a falling leaf and the ground.