What Goes Around Comes Back With Roses

Last night, I returned from a potluck and worship sharing with our local Quaker meeting to find an email waiting for me with the news that I had been accepted to attend Launch Pad astronomy workshop at the University of Wyoming. It's a NASA-funded workshop for established writers, a sort of “crash course” in modern astronomy science through guest lectures and observation through the University of Wyoming’s professional telescopes. I'd sent off my application some time ago and more or less forgotten about it, except for the occasional wistful thought that although I didn't stand much of a chance, it sure would be wonderful.


Here's one reason why, a highly personal one. I hear people talk about "passing the time," as if life were something to be endured while you got through it, as if there were a critical shortage of fascinating things to do. I've always felt just the opposite, that there are so many amazing things to see and do and learn, I need a dozen lifetimes for them all. I'd say, "I want to see the Louvre and paddle down the Amazon and study astronomy and...and..."

I'm not sure how the universe is going to present me with a trip down the Amazon, but I've been to Paris twice and now I get to learn about the stars and stuff. What an amazing thing life is! This news is particularly awesome--and I don't pretend there is a causal relationship--because it comes on the heels of something I chose to do, the omnibus giveaway. It's as if in opening my hands to give, I have also opened them to receive. Instead of holding on with a clenched fist, I've become a conduit. As with love, if I want to get it, I have to give it freely.

So of course what that means is many cool stories will spring from what I learn this summer!