Today’s Life-Line is:

Recently, I just buried my mom and she was ninety-two years old. She was a sweetheart and never afraid of death. Once she said to me, “You know I’ve never done this before” like it was skydiving. You know, she was just kind of exhilarated by it. . . I have eight brothers and sisters. Whenever one or two or eight of us were standing around her bed and she’d come back into consciousness, she’d see one of us and she’d say with breathless delight, “You’re here! You’re here!”

And after I buried her I thought well that’s the only thing God has on God’s mind. Which is to kind of say with breathless delight, “You’re here. You’re here.”

And so you receive the tender glance of God and then you choose to be the tender glance of God in the world. And that’s the only thing that makes any damn sense to me at the moment ’cause that’s where the joy is.

And there are people who lead you to that. And the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, they lead you to— how to more and more be receptive to the tender glance and to be generous with that glance with others. Anyway— that’s what I’ve come to see more surely lately.

~ from Sounds True interview with Father Greg Boyle

Artwork: Lee Lawson