CELEBRATION!

My favorite writer, HN, wrote:

Community is characterized by two things: one is forgiveness, the other is celebration. Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not being God--for not fulfilling all my needs. I too must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other people's needs....forgiveness becomes the word for love in the human context.

The interesting thing is that when you can forgive people for not being God, then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God...You don't have everything of God, but what you have to offer is worth celebrating By celebrate I mean to lift up, affirm confirm, to rejoice in another person's gifts. You can say you are a reflection of that unlimited love....

So celebration becomes important and can be very concrete expressions of love, like birthday celebrations that simply say, "I'm happy you are there."

Today Jeff and I are celebrating 41 years of marriage. What a strange, wild ride it has been! We can honestly say that we have learned the secret of forgiving one another and today we are going to celebrate with grateful hearts saying to one another, "I am so happy you are there!"

I told Jeff this morning that today is the first day of the rest of our lives. I am praying that the rest will be the very best and I believe that it will be.