If Tomorrow is a Gift

I read that on a card somewhere and it got me to thinking. The ‘if’ should be removed from that phrase. I mean, tomorrow is a gift. As is today, as is this hour, this moment, this breath. The question is, how often do I have clarity of sight to see it as such? And once seen, how long do I dwell there? How do I unwrap and enjoy this truth?

Allowing. If there’s one thing I’d like to do more with my gift, it’s allowing. I want to open the door to All-That-Is, allow it to enter the rooms of my heart, not shrinking from what I perceive as bad or wrong or painful. And in the rooms no longer occupied by agendas and appointments, by shoulds and coulds and would-haves, by fears of abandonment, embarrassment or rejection, I’d start decorating.

I’d hang truth like a mirror on my wall, a remember-who-you-are looking glass, to aid my discernment of self and world. I’d paint the walls All-Is-Joy red and post depth-perception wallpaper in the hallway. I’d plant impossible gardens in the cracks of the wooden floor and cheer for the dreams-come-true bulbs to bloom. I’d hang curtains of courage around each window, install brass-hope doorknobs on the doors and lay multi-colored carpets of faith on the floor, each one ready to be taken for a midnight ride. I’d light candles to Imagining, smoke incense to Inspiration and build an altar to Transformation, a burning phoenix embroidered on the mantle, its wings my windrose, my compass, a flaming star to guide me home.

I’d carve a door in the ceiling that opens to true seeing, the kind of vista-vision allowing me to truly see the red-dazzled poppy flower, the magic shimmer of dewy grass and the invisible gift offered to me when the whiskey-soaked man in the street asks me for a dollar, when the baby bird falls from its nest and breaks its tiny neck on my driveway, when my next door neighbor calls her son worthless and stupid for the ninth time.

These, too, are gifts, and my day would allow me to see them as such, without flinching in fear or flaring in judgment. My tomorrow would bring the great love of What Is to my life and instead of twisting and turning with want to change, the gift would hand me my life, my day, my moment and my breath, exactly as it is. And I would settle into it, a cushion, a blanket, a sigh. I would burn bright with allowing, a star in the palm of God’s hand, an open door to the enduring truth of what is, what was and what always will be:

I am the gift.

And so are you.

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