The day itself.  A quiet birthday.  Joe called, got an e-mail yesterday from Mary, one today from Tom Crane.  Joe and Aunt Dorothy sent cards.  Kate either made or bought cookies and cards and greeted me this am.

It is, in some ways, a silly custom.  Honoring someone because they recapitulated an event shared by every living person, and every dead one, too, for that matter.  

Yet I like it.  It helps to know folks out there know enough about me, care enough about me, to remember.  The converse can happen, too, of course.  Birthdays can pass forgotten or begrudged, the years mounting up on a shelf, dusty and dry. 

We want, no, need to be known, at least by someone.  It is the knowing of another that can see us through hard times, amplify our good times, validate our lives when we have trouble summoning up the will to do it on our own.  Yes, letting others have the final say in our self-worth is not only dangerous; it's finally wrong, because impossible.  Still, one day out of the year, I like a little cake, a cookie and a card or two.  A smile somewhere. 

Happy birthday, you.

The great movements of celestial mechanics have brought the earth again to the approximate place of my birth, recorded in the human way as a date on a calendar. 

A birthday is a spot on the spiral, returned to again and again; a point from which to view life from start to current moment, or to view the last full cycle of the earth around the sun.  This dance has happened 59 times since Gertrude Eliza Ellis gave birth to me in Duncan, Oklahoma.  How many more times are not written, nor are they relevant, since life can only proceed one revolution of the earth at a time, one hour at a time, one second at a time.

A Valentine's Birthday has much to commend to it.  It is a date for love, for flowers, for hope.  Even the Art Institute has a new exhibit, Cupid and Psyche by Gerard nestled among other neo-classical works from our collection.  This painting has traveled to us from the Louvre.  So, it is a day with some splash, a bit of color, yet not so big a date as, say, Christmas or New Years or April Fools or July 4th.  It adds to the day, rather detracts.

This last year has had the flavor of maturation, emotionally and intellectually.  In externals Joseph has moved away and Jon and Jen will present us with our first grandchild.  Kate and I have grown closer, more certain of our direction for what's next.  As a thinker, I find my self moving toward a creative phase, a time when much of the learning I have accumulated will begin to push itself out into the broader world.  Also, the inner drive for fame has waned, replaced with an acceptance, even a celebration of who I just am:  a scholar, a monk, and a poet.

I look forward, God willin' and the creek don't rise, to a productive year with sermons, essays, a book or two.  This is a good time in my life.