After watching tonight's episode of Bones, a Fox drama about a forensic anthropoligist, I thought about how blessed I really am. The show really made me angry tonight, but it was a righteous anger. Normally, the program features the team solving old mysteries, sometimes centuries old. Occasionally they solve a current crime and they always catch the bad guy, which lends an air of retributive justice to the conclusion. Usually I come away from the show with that "all is well" kind of feeling. But not tonight, even though they caught the bad guy. Tonight's villian fell victim to greed. He was a mortician, and in an effort to make a buck, he sold off all the transplantable or graftable body parts from a deceased man's body instead of cremating him as the family wished. Only trouble was this man had died of all-pervasive, terminal cancer. The parts were transplanted/grafted into the bodies of hundreds of others, all of whom then became ill with the same kind of terminal cancer. Some died. I don't know what the actual science of that idea is, or if that's even possible, but it's just sick. I felt angry after the show. But, and back to the point of this post, I felt blessed.

A young girl who was one of the ones who became ill really wanted, as her life's dream, to go to the Louvre. She was an aspiring and already accomplished artist, so a visit to the Louvre would be magnificent for her. The closest she came was a virtual tour as she lay in her hospital bed waiting to die.

By age 24, I have walked the glorious halls of the Louvre and stared Mona Lisa in the face, I have prayed at St. Peter's in the Vatican, I have beheld the majesty of Michaelangelo's David and the awesome, awe-inspiring vistas of the Sistine Chapel. I have hiked mountains in Switzerland and swam in Lake Geneva next to the Chateau de Chillion. I have skiied the Appalachians and biked Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. I have seen, worshipped, and wept in the tomb of Christ and I have put my hand on the rock of Golgotha. I have been allowed inside the Dome of the Rock, and felt the cold stone of Abraham's altar, David's threshing floor, Solomon's cornerstone, and Muhammad's (PBUH) place of ascendence all at once. I have taken in the twinkling lights of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, and I have walked the gardens of Hampton Court. I have done more in my mere 24 years than most get to do in a lifetime and I want to take this moment, right now, to be thankful. Funny how a TV show can bring on all this.

So, whatever you want to call it, blessed, lucky, charmed, I am thankful for the life I have thus far led and I look forward to all that is to come.

-R