I have been sick for the past few days. A relapse of sorts. After a few days of fever and a Barry White low voice, I finally went to the doc and she loaded me up with antibiotics and all the usual admonitions of resting and liquids. I’m told I’ll feel better in a day or two if I am a good boy.

I am a pretty good patient. I used to be terrible, but after years of making sure I set myself back a week from every illness I ever fought, I finally figured out a day or few of rest actually DOES make me more productive faster, so yesterday and today, I’ve tended to the “have to do” list (which, if we are honest, is way smaller than we think it is.), and pretty much let the world go by without me for a couple of days in a feverish blur.

I used to hate fevers. Hated them. I have a pretty decent brain and I like to use it. A feverish brain, however is NOT a good brain. It can pretty much muddle up anything you give it. Back when I insisted on being manly (and stupid) about being sick, I pretty much ended up redoing everything I did while being all tough and stuff. So then I got to be mad at the fever, and mad at me too, for being so hard headed.

Now? I just go with it. To date the world has survived just fine every time I’ve fallen sick over the last decade and so the odds are it will again. I lay down, drink, read (Sometimes the same chapter several times. Makes the book last longer.). And I think.

Yeah think. Dangerous stuff when the red stuff in your thermometer is tapping against the end wanting to get out. But hey, I’m feverish. I don’t know better.

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about where I am in life. Like a lot of people, my life has taken a few turns into the wilderness. With a lot of help and grace from a lot of people, I’m reclaimed most of the best of me, and have most of the ugly demon stuff at bay. (It’s a noisy closet I stuff them in though. I don’t think they like it there.). I’ve been thinking about the journey, the discoveries, the false starts, the struggle and the joys of it all, and trying to sort through the very long list of things to be thankful for to narrow it down to one or two that were at the core of it all.

Why think this? I didn’t need a why. I was feverish. Still am a little.

As I did my slow motion thinking, I thought, earlier this morning, that I had it narrowed down to two. Safety and Grace.

I write a lot about both of these in my poems and essays. I preach a lot on them too.

I think people flourish in a place where they feel emotionally safe and where people give them the grace to let them flounder, make mistakes and find their path, all the while still loving us. I’ve seen it in my life, in the lives of my children, in the lives of people I worked with and worked for me, in my parishioners. It seems pretty consistent that when we live in a place of safety and grace, we flourish. Our relationships flourish. Our creativity flourishes. Our joy, faith, and personal power and energy flourish.

I was happy enough with that answer. It seemed to be a good use of a couple of days fever. Then I got the picture at the top of this essay in the mail.

A friend, Kathy Cary, who is a calligrapher and artist and all round nice person sent it to me. She is painting and drawing things all the time and I had seen it on one of her facebook posts. I commented that she should get prints made, because I’d buy one. And bless her heart, she ignored the whole print idea and t me original, which is now sitting on my desk. I love it.

And it totally messed up my feverish answers. I had to add “time to Be” in the mix.

I think we live our lives too busily. In our effort to grab every opportunity, or not “waste” time, we bust through life like is some kind of competition.

It’s not.

It’s not and we need time to think. To let our days and the blessings and battles wash over us and sink in. To learn the lessons that come at us from every direction. To listen to our souls, to God, to the universe, to our spouse, our children, our cats and dogs and the birds outside, our muse, our own hearts – every one of them a gift that too often gets tossed in the closet with all the other stuff without appreciating any of them fully.

Including safety and grace.

So there’s my great answer to one of the big questions of life. Don’t worry, I’ll be better in a day or two and will return to our regular scheduled programming.

Be well. Travel Wisely. Don’t talk while feverish.

Tom