Gifts

It is crystal clear.

I do need to buy the Mary Oliver book (“Upstream”) and then pick it up and read it regularly. The way people early in recovery read “The Big Book” and “The 12 and 12”. I feel entirely filled with inspiration and awe and a bit of regret and the hope for a bigger, brighter future having read the Oliver book. In fact, I’m thinking that very soon I am going to have and own all the books I need — and will ever need — and one of my foremost purposes the remainder of my life will be to pick those books up one at a time and read them again. And, then after a while, again. So they sink in like, I could say, the way the “12 and 12” sank in after seemingly endless repeated readings at meetings.

This means there are many books in the house today, mostly paperbacks but some hardcovers, which I own and have owned, a few as long as 50 years, and loved and sometimes have read more than four times, which now, though, will not find themselves among the collection I designate as crucial moving forward — the collection whose repeated readings assist this little light of mine I shine to, maybe and hopefully, shine a little brighter with each passing read.

With all these other books, the ones no longer required, I can see my wife Susan and I making repeated trips and visits to the little libraries up on the sidewalks in front of peoples’ homes — (The city supplies them, the library building materials, for free, the homeowner puts them together, voila!). We, Susan and I, each carried three books to a couple of the sidewalk libraries last week. Still there is a pile of eight or nine waiting by the front door for their donation.

Now, with this morning’s plan, that pile is bound to grown exponentially. I did, also, have an idea – among 10 or so ideas I think up and write down every morning – that we, Susan and I and the kids, should apply for and construct (the construction will be primarily the result of Susan’s expertise and confidence with all things hands-on) a little library of our own, because I believe for months we can keep it stocked with a fresh supply of good, long-loved books, and always filled no matter how many get ‘borrowed’.

And, it is true, books other than ours will find their way into our little library – because this is how it works – and it is entirely possible, considering the ever-presence of magical mysticism and inspired spirituality, I will come across, at the tail end of a work day or long walk, a sideways glance at the glass plate through which the books are seen, a book I have never read, one I find myself drawn to by words and images on front and back covers. And I will take it into the house and make the time to begin it and, for all I know, I’ll be blessed with a new addition to the collection of spiritual enablers and creative exciters, those abundance acknowledge-rs that I have gathered to me.

Like the Mary Oliver book I just finished a few minutes ago.

Another gift.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver