Why do we have this amazing gift of being?

The ability to experience, to think and to imagine, to care and to love?

I love the words of a little-known writer, Thomas Traherne. He writes about the gift of life in a poem called ‘Salutation’:

1

These little Limbs,

These Eyes and Hands which here I find,

These rosie Cheeks wherewith my Life begins,

Where have ye been? Behind

What Curtain were ye from me hid so long!

Where was? in what Abyss, my Speaking Tongue?

2

When silent I,

So many thousand thousand years,

Beneath the Dust did in a Chaos lie,

How could I Smiles or Tears,

Or Lips or Hands or Eyes or Ears perceiv?

Welcome ye Treasures which I now receive.

3

I that so long

Was Nothing from Eternity,

Did little think such Joys as Ear or Tongue,

To Celebrate or See:

Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet,

Beneath the Skies, on such a Ground to meet.

4

New Burnished Joys!

Which yellow Gold and Pearl excel!

Such Sacred Treasures are the Limbs in Boys,

In which a Soul doth Dwell;

Their Organized Joints, and Azure veins

More Wealth include, then all the World contains.

5

From Dust I rise,

And out of Nothing now awake,

These Brighter Regions which salute mine Eyes,

A Gift from God I take.

The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the Day, the Skies,

The Sun and Stars are mine; if those I prize.

6

Long time before

I in my Mother’s Womb was born,

A God preparing did this Glorious Store,

The World for me adorn.

Into this Eden so Divine and fair,

So Wide and Bright, I come his Son and Heir.

7

A Stranger here

Strange Things doth meet, strange Glories See;

Strange Treasures lodged in this fair World appear,

Strange all, and New to me.

But that they mine should be, who nothing was,

That Strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

‘The Salutation’ by Thomas Traherne

He thinks about the gift of his body, of his experience, of having life itself.

He sees life as emerging from nothing – we each have our own personal “Big Bang” as another writer, Richard Rohr, said, and he takes it all as a gift from God.

I find it a beautiful poem. A poem that speaks to me about the beauty of the experience of life.

Life can be good when we are able to be grateful for each day of our existence, and gift our gift of being to others, as well as enjoy life for what it is.