John and I were invited to a retirement party. The title alone tells you that the median age was sixty five. Actually more than, because of the eleven couple friends who were there, albeit some whose partners are already gone, I was the youngest. The man we were celebrating gifted us with a timeline of his life. In ten year blocks he described the trajectory of a long career. It was riveting.

He showed us a little coffee mug, made by his daughter, that he would take into the waiting room of his cancer practice, to sit by patients and listen to them. He wanted to put them at ease at a time in their lives when ease was hard to come by. He held up cards and gifts from people who were bursting with thanks. 

"If I had been a family doctor, helping people with the flu, they would have jumped back into their routines after the interruption without much gratitude. But these people were enormously glad to be alive."

The Ten Blessings suggest as much. 

"Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled."

It turns out that being filled implies having previously been empty. Comfort means more to a person whose cheeks have not yet dried.

Part of what moved me about his monologue was what he left out. He brushed over his own cancer, as if it was less interesting than the feeling of having served people. There was no mention of his chronic pain, or the detail about his father dying when he was a little boy.

The sense of history in the room was palpable. There were marriages that have been through some of the stormiest winds life has to hurl. Yet their faith in God has kept them from blowing out to sea. 

“Divine Providence has as its end in view a person's eternal salvation, thus not their great happiness in the world, not - that is to say - wealthiness and eminence which people during their lifetime think real happiness consists in.”

Emanuel Swedenborg, Heavenly Secrets 6481