Contrast and Compare

This last week I received two birthday invitations in the mail. One was for my great- niece's first birthday and the other is for a friend's 100th birthday. For some reason I was struck by the idea that two people I care about are celebrating such amazing milestones. For the one year old a lifetime of experiences: joys, sadness, laughs and tears, stretches out in front of her. So much potential boiling under the surface. For the 100 year old I think of all the amazing, horrifying, crazy things she has seen in those 100 years. What will another 100 years bring us. Some of the amazing, never-will-forget events that have happened in my lifetime include September 11, 2001, the Berlin Wall falling, the invention of the internet and of course the birth of my children. So I have been thinking a lot about the moments and events that make up a lifetime. This last week two my brother's step daughters gave birth to beautiful babies. Two new lives began this week! What a miracle the birth of a child is. This last week a friend buried her grandmother. An amazing life ended and began a new journey that we here still struggling through this mortal existence cannot fully understand. What does this moment in time mean to you and me. Is it a turning point upon which an entire life shifts course? What will be the pattern in my "life quilt" when I look back on it at 100?