Life is full of beauty—let's celebrate it.
Life is full of pain—let's celebrate that too.
Life is full of sorrow—let's celebrate that beautiful flower.
And life is full of joy—let's celebrate it.
Let's celebrate our latest triumph.
And let's celebrate our latest defeat.
Life has both mountains and valleys,
both days and nights,
both summers and winters.
O let us celebrate this
outrageously
heartbreakingly
beautiful thing we call life on earth.
Life has its frustrations and heartbreaks, oh does it ever.
And its times of sweetly going right.
Let us celebrate them both, because both are part of it.
Life has both sunrises and sunsets—
how beautiful that it has both.
Life has pain, tragedy, loss, defeat
and pleasure, comedy, gain and victory.
How sweet that it has both.
Without the up side of life we would have no savoring,
no being struck with awe,
no enjoying of pleasure,
no reveling in the joy of the senses.
And without the down side of life we would have
no introspection,
no humility,
no regeneration
no compassion.
Let us celebrate both these side of life, both so necessary.
Speaking metaphorically, the intelligence who
designed this universe
is so far beyond human intelligence
that we can't even imagine how great the gulf is.
But we can get a glimpse
when we see that we live in a perfect world.
If the world contained more downs than up,
more pain than pleasure,
more defeat than victory,
our overall happiness would suffer from it.
And here's the interesting part:
If the world contained more ups than downs,
more pleasure than pain,
more victory than defeat,
our overall happiness would also suffer.
Because humility and surrender and compassion
would not exist.
O Lord God whom I cannot understand,
I bow down and salute Thee,
who is also at the same time never separate
from me and has no existence other than me
and everything else.
I bow down to your mystery, that is,
I bow down to my own mystery, our mystery,
the mystery of everything and everybody,
which is you, which is me, which is us, which is all.
I bow down to your beauty and your ugliness.
I bow down to your forests and cesspools.
I bow down to your kindness and your cruelty.
I bow down to the hued fragrance of your roses
and I bow down to your sharp thorns on them.
I bow down to the hope of your sunrise
and the despair of your sunset.
I bow down to your lovers
and I bow down to your haters.
I bow down to your peace-makers
and I bow down to your war-makers.
I bow down to you, and I'm no longer willing to leave
anything out of my bow.
I bow down to all of you with nothing left out.
How could I leave anything out of you when I bow?
I can't. I love you too much,
that is to say, we love each other too much,
that is to say, everything is everything too much
to leave anything out.
I'm so glad you put the roaring tiger here.
And I'm so glad you put the lowly clam
crawling along in the mud.
What a stroke of genius,
to put both sunny skies and thunderclouds!
But you understand my babbling...
I love your tender heart.
I love that there is love in you.
What an incredible thing, that love exists.
I bow down to you again.
And I love the hate that makes it possible,
I bow down again and again to your genius.
When I feel sad, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel glad, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel powerless, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel powerful, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel humbled and defeated, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel victorious and mighty, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel overcome with pleasure, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
When I feel suffused with pain, O Lord, let me celebrate it.
Let me celebrate all of you with nothing ever left out again.
Let me celebrate all of you.
Let me celebrate all of myself which is only you.
Let me celebrate all of us
with not even a humble stone by the side of the river
ever left out.
Let me love you in every moment that "I" have breath.
Let us, all of us, who are nothing but each other,
love ourselves whenever we meet ourselves,
which is always.
Let me love you when I meet you in this moment,
whatever disguise you come in.
Let me see through your exquisite disguise
and see my true self always looking at me,
always looking at itself,
always appreciating itself,
always loving itself,
always falling down before its own beauty,
the beauty of existence,
the waterfall of existence,
bowing down before itself.
—jim sloman, 7/15/02 for Jul 15
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