Thanksgiving Leftovers: A Little Meme To Go With That 14th Turkey Sandwich

Rating: GT, QT

From John at SmuloSpace:

1. Write down five things that you're thankful for.


2. Tag five friends who you'd like to see participate in this meme.
   (Optional) Include a link to the original at SmuloSpace in your post, and then visit the post yourself and place a link to your completed meme in the comments section so John can keep track of the thankfulness running around the blogosphere.

I've already done some giving of thanks in comments on other blogs, so I'm sorry if some of this reads like Thanksgiving leftovers, but as my mama used to say, it's a crying shame to waste good things. So here it is, My 5 Things I'm Thankful For:

1. Alive, alive-o!!! L is alive. Tomorrow, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, is the One-Year Anniversary of the first (!) time one of L's doctors told me that they'd never seen anything like this and he frankly didn't know why L wasn't dead yet.
   L is alive and eating and cracking jokes and laughing that gorgeous ass off, and it is the most beautiful thing I've ever ever seen.


2. S !!! The movable feast that is the annual AAR/SBL conference was held this year in a place only a couple of hours away from where we're spending Thanksgiving, so S gave a paper (Queering the Queer and the Queerness and Why God Loves Us, or something like that), made the rounds of professional squabble-and-squeaks, and then hightailed it over here for the holiday. The last time we laid eyes on each other was dropping me off at the airport after we moved the House of S to the middle of the midwest. I give thanks and praise to the God of Love for S, who continues to make me believe in things I'm afraid to believe in.


3. Coffee, without which the 5:30 am two-hour drive of S to the airport this morning might have ended in tragedy.


4. Grace unlooked-for: the online community, the idea of which I snorted and sneered about for so long before I actually jumped into it; the insight of others that illuminates my struggle; the glorious full moon on this morning's early drive through the desert; the great good humor and total forgiveness shown by L's mother when I snored SO LOUD for SO LONG I actually drove her out of her own bed in the night.


5. The 2007 beaujolais nouveau. Open it up and let it sit out on the counter overnight. Oh, my my my my.

Now tagging Kirstin,
Swandive,
Blue Wren,
wild and precious,
and Garnabus.

yours in the struggle,
Max

Failing Better

Rating: GRH (new rating)

Samuel Beckett tells us,
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

There's a lovely and moving piece by Rumi that has cropped up a couple of times in my wanderings of the last few days--most recently over at Barefoot and Laughing--that is, I know, much more intentional and courageous in its tenacious embrace of eyes-wide-open hope.

I'm not there yet.
I hope to be, one day--I hope for the willingness to hope for the will to live that kind of hope.
One day.

For now, I give thanks for St Sammy ("a prophet for the rest of us") and his stumpy grumpy grimy covered-in-rainsoaked-redolent-wormy-earth way with words.

Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

yours in the struggle,
Max