Messy Notes: Blog

My name is Abe Janzen. Sometimes it’s Abram … If you are reading this, I am glad. These notes are not any big deal; they are about living. What I seem to run into, the longer I am walking and breathing, is how messy it all is, and how lovely and inviting it is to live. Almost mysterious and also so maybe not! I have been struggling w a serious health issue for a number of months and at one time, not long ago, Kathy, my wife, asked if I ever think that I might not get better. “All the time”, I said. And then I added a bit later … “you know what I so want … I just want to be alive.” To run errands, to go to work, to drop a coat at the drycleaners, to grab a morning coffee on the way to work, to be hungry, to read the Calgary Herald before I do anything in the morning, to play w Joshua and Olivia, to do little renovations projects w Kathy in the house … lousy as I am at doing them. Being unable this last little while, to enjoy most of those ordinary disconnected and maybe incoherent centerpieces of living, makes me realize how much they are exactly that … the centerpieces. A group called Over the Rhine, sings a song that has as its first line … “what a beautiful piece of heartache … this has all turned out to be”. Living is messy. New to each of us. I hope, surprizing to all of us. But the heartache and the centerpieces seem to be attached to each other … . And they are both there.