Ordinary Blessings

“What do you want to do,” my sister asked when I was released from the hospital. It was a bright blue fall morning the glorious kind of day when the leaves are at their brilliant peak, the sun is shining and the chill on the air makes you feel alive. “First I want to take a bath and then I want to go to a park.”

My entire family was gathered in Bellingham, Washington that week keeping vigil at St. Joseph where I’d been admitted in acute congestive heart failure. Luckily my symptoms had quickly stabilized during a short stay in the ICU, surprising everyone in the hospital. With the advice to “get on a transplant list as soon as possible” I’d been released after only four days. Nothing can quite describe the experience of walking out of a hospital into the light of an ordinary day when one has been close to death. In a sense it’s so simple and ordinary: walking down a hallway into a lobby, through double sliding glass doors and out into the world.

In truth, there’s nothing ordinary at all about any day. There’s nothing ordinary about living in a world that’s full of miracles. On some level we know that each day is a miracle. Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget how precious life is. For the most part we’re simply too busy, too distracted to appreciate the miracle of our own life. So we take it for granted. And contrary to what we might think, illness and misfortune don’t diminish that miracle while fame and money don’t enhance it. Perhaps the only thing that might truly undermine the miracle of our precious human birth is not appreciating it, not being mindful of it, not utilizing it to its fullest capacity according to our ability and the opportunities that come our way – even something as simple as the opportunity to be kind.

Boulevard Park

Boulevard Park sits along the edge of Bellingham Bay with views to the San Juan Islands in the distance. It’s a beautiful and popular destination. On a nice weekend the park is packed with people – ordinary people – and on this sunny fall day people were everywhere. Park benches line the water’s edge and we headed across the grass to claim one of them, dodging a Frisbee game along the way. I was walking slowly, weakened by an enlarged heart and limping with leg muscles stiffened from too many days in bed.

A week earlier I’d finished a solo backpack trip of the northern section of the Pacific Crest Trail. Starting at the Canadian boarder and ending at Rainy Pass on the North Cascade Highway, I’d walked the 70 miles in under a week. I’d planned the trip as an escape from civilization, preferring the solitude of wilderness to the company of people. But on this day that was for me anything but ordinary, as my brother helped me to the bench, and as I took in the sights and sounds of the many people sharing the park, I realized with the suddenness and surety of an epiphany that we bless each other by our very presence.

It isn’t necessary that we know each other, or that we smile at each other, or nod, or recognize one another in any way – although those things are certainly nice. It is simply that our presence, our life, the very miracle of our existence is in itself a blessing. We are, each one of us, a blessing. Every ordinary person is an extraordinary miracle and it is a blessing to be in the presence of another human being.