Yesterday I was cleaning out my closet, folding pants, hanging shirts, culling things for donation to the Good Will when I came across a slip of torn yellow paper onto which I long ago copied a quote from Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov.    If you've read the book, you might remember that Alyosha records things his spiritual teacher, Father Zossima, recounts near the end of his life.  This quote comes from those last musings:

"But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim.  "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness.  My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other's offenses?  Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise each other and bless our life."  

I have been carting this torn slip of paper around with me for years now, through several moves even.  It has been pinned to a bulletin board, tucked in a book, nestled on a shelf in my closet and when I come upon it all of a sudden, I feel my life lift up, I've caught the moment my life is blessed.

The other day I was sitting at a coffee shop, tapping out some paragraphs on a story, when my phone lit up with a text from my brother.  He happened to be rereading the part of the Brother's Karamazov from which my quote comes. "I think it's the dearest most enlightened thing I've ever read," the text said.  I typed back as best I remembered my missing quote (not knowing it was hibernating beneath a pair of corduroys on my shelf).  "It's so anecdotally truthful" he wrote.  "That book is perfect." I wrote, "wisdom literature."

What I love about this moment with my brother -- though thousands of miles apart and using texts, of all things -- is that we were indeed acting as Zossima counsels. Through our few minutes of sharing these precious thoughts we were entering the garden, walking together, playing, praising, blessing our lives.

The gate to that garden is everywhere -- in this case a few texts swung it open and we found ourselves glad, embracing each other, loving this life.  I don't live in that place as much as I could wish... which of us do?  But what's strange is how easily that gate swings open when given a little nudge.  It doesn't take grand visions, but is so often made of humble things -- a walk, a romp in the snow with my kids, a single conversation with a friend -- and all of a sudden my life is ennobled, my stock of reality is broadened, deepened, replenished, and I understand, if only momentarily, the ways in which one day is indeed enough.