When you die, God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself. ~Anonymous

My mom died last fall.

I sat by her hospital bed for a week as she lay dying. It being the south, all manner of relatives, blood and otherwise, streamed in and out of the hospital room and told long stories about Mama's life. My sisters and brother and I laughed buckets and cried rivers. The wonderful pleasures of drawn out southern tales, uninhibited laughter of aunts and cousins, and platters of fried chicken rose from the same deep life spring as the grief for my mom dying hour by hour in her white gown.

Since then, my own horizon of mortality—knowing that someday that will be me letting go of this sweet life—has loomed large in my mind's eye. The nearness of that horizon, whether measured in weeks or years or decades, hits me more in my fifties than it could have even 10 years ago.

I've thought often of that quote about being held accountable for pleasures denied. What luscious delights (that angels would gleefully incarnate for) have I tossed aside in my impatience to get stuff done?

In the bittersweet aching for my mom, I realize that this life is the one I've been given. This is it! This is it! In honor of her life, and mine, I stop now to relish the crisp delights of my afternoon Fuji apple, the sensual pleasure of my breasts rising and falling with my breath, the evening light shafting through the Japanese maples in the back garden, the scent of my husband when he leans over to kiss me.

And so, lovely and luscious women, I open my arms to welcome you as sisters on the journey! This full-bodied journey of awakening to the deep pleasures of life: pleasures that liberate us from lives far too tight and small for our spirits; pleasures that open us wide to what makes life meaningful and right. Pleasures that nourish our bodies and sustain our souls and, from that fullness, free us to give back to this sweet and achingly transient world.

I invite you to honor your own delicious pleasure, not as "self-care" or "self-improvement," but as light, water, and oxygen for your body and soul. I invite you to allow delight to heat up your own love and wisdom and ignite your passionate care for the world and for those around you.

What if authentic pleasure was neither detour nor distraction, but the royal road to your own heart and body and soul and spirit? What if your pleasures were a blessing, a mitzvah, for your own life and the life of everything and everyone around you?

What could you do, what could you offer, if you were lit up from within by the delights of your own body and soul?

When you meet your Maker and Source, what unsung pleasures will you have to account for?

Why not sing them into being now?