The spouse of someone I know very well passed away today as a result of complications due to cancer. In writing about his struggle to overcome the cancer, someone wrote in tribute

He never stops being positive! It also never ceases to amaze me how genuine and authentic he naturally is....But we need more people like him in the world. There isn't time to waste not being a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace.

The impression he made on me the few times we crossed path was pretty much similar.  Needless to say, today has been a somber one.  The demands of life, however, continue and we push forward while trying to come to terms with something like the passing of someone in this fashion. We all deal with these things in our own way, and as is my proclivity, I retreated into my head, thinking it out.  The wish for people still here to be a mirror stuck with me.  Other thoughts of which I have blogged about and have been swirling around in my mind gravitated to it.  The aspiration to be a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace is one path for what I like to call the struggle to appear.

I have been clean and sober for just over a month now and have made the commitment to travel down the recovery path once again.  Nearly a decade ago I had tried this before and after a couple of years of a week here and a month there I was able to achieve about a year of continuous sobriety before going "back out."  Consequently I saw new year arrive last night sober for just the second time in some thirty five years (except for those times I had fallen asleep before the midnight hour).

I don't bring this up seeking some kind of congratulations (or pity), nor to wag my finger at all those out there who enjoy their libations in whatever preferred form.  The reason I bring this up can be seen in the word "libation" itself. While we now use the word to merely describe any of the intoxicating beverages (and other substances) we consume or the consuming of such, it originally referred to the pouring of a liquid offering as a religious ritual or the liquid so poured.  Like the word libation, our celebrations have tended to lose their role to help orientate us in the world once the event is over.  They have become just merely another event in which we participate. 

Herbert Blau wrote in Taking Up the Bodies:

We lack the ritual forms with the clear events; when we have the clear events we distrust the forms.

Recent blogs by myself and others has me pondering the notion of nations and the forces that hold them together and tear them apart.  And this pondering inevitably leads to remembering Professor Peter Sugar.  I only took one class from him during my time at the University of Washington in pursuit of a degree in history.  Yet he had a profound impact on how I see the world and the relationship between that world and myself (and others).