i thank you God
The haze of morning was casting a soft pink glow across the old white brick. A century ago, these buildings were factories, mills, grain exchange houses for wheat and ambition. Now their limestone and brick faces wear the light, and years, in the most beautiful way.
I put on my headphones and Marcus King’s "Wildflowers & Wine" resumed where I’d drifted off last night, right before I located Whitacre's arrangement of "I Thank You God for Most This Amazing Day" to settle into my ears. But as fate would have it, I was only moments away from meeting a new Marcus entirely.
He approached reluctantly. People sometimes assume hesitation like his is a staged overture, part of some panhandler’s act, but it’s easy to tell the difference. Anyone who has looked into someone through their eyes can tell. And anyway, what does the difference matter?
He was carrying that clear plastic bag you get as a complimentary accessory after an overnight stay at the county correctional. I must have seemed approachable, standing there loitering with my head tipped back into the rosy sky.
We talked for a while. In the end, I handed him the snacks in my bag that my son had accidentally abandoned there, and the assorted bills in my wallet left over from a rare weekend ATM withdrawal for a cash-only excursion.
I usually don’t find myself walking by this building. No reason in particular, I just don’t have any business nearby. But the last time I was there I had a similar exchange. The elderly gentleman leaned on his cane and called out down the road “what you’ve done for the least of these, you’ve done for Him.”
Though unseasonably warm, the morning chill was starting to seep in, so I went inside and made my way to the office to putz with pixels and PowerPoints. I am grateful for my lot. Grateful for the web of small choices, unlikely connections, and unassuming opportunities that have nudged me to this place.
For a thousand reasons—circumstances, timing, mercy—such doors do not open for everyone. We are extraordinarily blessed to live in a place where we’re able to pursue happiness, liberty, life. Where else had ever before declared such hopes to be self-evident truths? Sometimes a reminder arrives in unexpected temperatures or unexpected conversations. Let today’s record of warmth be a pocket of borrowed heat for this week of giving thanks.
i thank you God for most this amazing
By E. E. Cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)