Yesterday i went with my wife to Terre Haute so that she could have an MRI done on her back. She has degenerative disks and chronic back pain, and as it had been years since her last MRI, the Doc wanted a new one to see how her condition may have progressed. While sitting in the lobby waiting for them to do the procedure, I read my autographed copy of "Modern Magick" by my friend Donald Michael Craig. It just happened that the TV show "Doctors" was blaring in the background, and they were doing something on "girl parts" I vaguely remember several references to "vagina" but my book was more interesting to me, so I just let it drone in the background. I started feeling drowsy and could smell the coffee at the courtesy table was still fresh so I stretched, laid the book aside and thought I would help myself to a cup of the bitter brew. While sauntering over, I noticed that the "Doctors" had went off and "Ellen" had come on, mainly because I had to walk past the big screen TV on my way to grab that cupa joe. They had a large tray of pastries handy there too. I had not had a one in a long time, so I helped myself to a square shaped offering that was covered with milk chocolate icing. I was pleasantly surprised to find they were also fresh, since I had expected them to be stale so late in the afternoon. Grabbing the booty from my raid on the courtesy station, I sauntered back to my seat, hot cup in one hand, napkin-wrapped sweet in the other, and levered myself into the no-so comfy chair, took a sip of the hot bitter coffee, followed by a bite of the pasty, and contemplated the floor patterns while Ellen droned in the background, something about babies.. I chuckled recalling some of the jabber on the previous show about penises and Vaginas and birth canals, followed by a thing on babies. I took another bite and washed that down with another sip of coffee and again contemplated the intricate patter in the weave of the carpet. Sometimes you can see messages in random patterns, and sometimes just cool pictures that seem to change each time you look at them.
Now as is the norm when you strive daily to strengthen your connection to Spirit, sometimes you will see a revelation in the most innocent act, that gets you to contemplating something else. I took another bite, while staring at the carpet and reviewing the material I had just read in my mind. This bite tasted different. There was some sort of pale yellowish oooze in the middle of my pastry. Well it didn't taste too bad and it looked better than some stuff I had coughed up, albeit not by a lot. I washed that down with another sip of black coffee and absently tore off another bite. Then it clicked, vaginas + penises + birth canal = babies = life. Which is both sweet and bitter at times like the pasty and black coffee I held in my hands. Well I had already known that but really had not thought about it in a very long time. Like the yellowish stuff inside the pastry, sometimes the sweetest things at first look rather unappealing, but turn out to be the sweetest part of life. And sometimes like the pastry itself, often what looks absolutely delicious on the surface harbors hidden secrets that to some may appear quite distasteful. The sweet can sometimes become overwhelming, so after a sip of the bitter, to wash it down, the contrast of the next bite tastes so much better. the alternating sweet and bitter bites mimic the cycles of life. We are here to experience, learn and to grow. If life is too easy we become complacent, too filled with the sweet to really appreciate what we have. Then the bitter events of life shake us out of our complacency, and help us to appreciate the sweet that much better.
Like the pasty and coffee I held in my hands, we hold our lives in our hands. We make choices, some lead to sweet reward, some to bitter experiences. But as we take our bites and sips we learn, we grow, and despite ourselves we become better than we were before. Life is indeed bittersweet. Enjoy the sweet, endure the bitter with hope and understand that both extremes are necessary parts of the process of life. The last bite of pastry was followed by a few more swigs of the cooling coffee. My wife had returned, and another fact of life had hit.. there are two things you just seem to rent, coffee and beer.
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