Just being Grateful

So this is a near perfect day. Breezy, intermittently sunny, couple of sprinkles, but all in all a near perfect day. I've been out in a garden, trying to reclaim from weeds and even through all the hard work that it is, I just keep feeling gratitude. To be able to do what I'm doing. To be able to choose it, to be able to enjoy it, to be able to find satisfaction in it.

Recently I did something for someone and the first response was "You didn't have to do that." And that caused me to smile because that's when the doing is the most fun. When you don't have to, but get to.

The following poem was written by William Earnest Henley. There are lots of interpretations and many who feel the poet was agnostic and so discount it, but for me the preferences of the writer do not determine how I feel or what the poem means to me. The same is true for me about everything. No one else believes exactly as I do, so I don't accept or reject anything based on what the creator does or doesn't believe.

I see God in everything. Even a poem written by one who might not.

My favorite line... "Finds and shall find me unafraid" So much in the world is about fear... insurance, hatred, burglar alarms, prejudice, safety latches, bigotry, rainy day funds, contingency plans...

I love this poem for it's outright rejection of a life lived in fear. He is determined but more than that, he is hopeful. As am I.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid
.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.