Integrity

I feel careful about approaching this topic. I come to integrity because as I am getting older I find that it is growing more and more important to me. Therefore, I should be able to define it, but it is much more elusive to me too. Integrity seems like pornography to me. By that, I mean, a supreme court justice once said, when he felt compelled to try and define pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Integrity too, seems like something one can notice sooner than one can define it.  I’m not going to write so much about what it is, because honestly I’m not sure I know, but I am going to try to write about the benefit of its presence.

I notice who touches me. They tend to have it. When it is missing, and/or underdeveloped, I tend to take everything that person says, even if I like it, and agree, with a grain of salt. It’s not quite that I don’t trust them. Even meaning well, I’m not going to rely on them. Integrity is, for me, some kind of navigational device. It’s a funny one. I don’t have a sense, and can only rely on its presence, when I’ve developed it inside myself. My ability to recognize it, in others, depends upon the work I do inside myself to grow and develop it.

I’m not defining what it is, partly out of reverence for it. Integrity, seems to me, to be somewhat mysterious. I can feel it, it is like a kind of presence, a core of some kind, a reassuring solidity, which tells me somebody is home. I like knowing that spending time here, with this person, is going to be a good investment of my precious life-energy.

I also like knowing that even when I lose my balance, which is fairly often, I have enough ballast inside, to keep me from permanently being unbalanced. My integrity saves me from damaging falls, and helps me orient towards the future. This is a great utility, but a hard-earned one. It is important, noticeable, in its presence or absence, it is  essential to aspirations of real achievement, and largely untalked about. Integrity, I guess because it is hard to define, and is so mysterious, doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

No matter how true that last assertion is, integrity is growing like a good cancer, in my aging internal landscape. Life seems to want me to have integrity.  As I age, I’ve grown more aware of my approaching death, and of a desire to live really fully now. Integrity seems to have more to do with the latter. Somehow, the quality and value of my life seems to revolve around whether I am living truly or not. Integrity has to do with me having everything lined up. Its not enough that I have values (like it used to be), now I have to be living them out.

I guess the aging piece is important here.  Somehow, as I’ve grown older, it has become increasingly important to me, to look at my own life, and to bring things into alignment. Values are becoming actions. Relationships are becoming other limbs. Life is becoming miraculous on a more and more detailed level. There is a sense of continuity that calls for a more refined sense of alignment, if you will, integrity.

I had to begin learning about living with some kind of integrity long before I could actually do it. That has been hard. It still is. Refining what I’ve learned about myself, about the incredible difficulty of being human, about the possibility of compassion, keeps me ever vigilant, awake to the whole dance, adjusting to the rhythms of change. My sense of integrity always seems to be suffering from a kind of jet-lag, behind the moment’s need, but there enough to know and be grateful for the lesson of the moment.

Developing something that keeps me in the game hasn’t come easy. The difficulty is like initiatory ordeals. I have scars to show for it, but those scars serve to remind me, that my presence in the game isn’t an accident. I have worked hard to be capable of failing so thoroughly, and being able to learn so well from these miserable but gallant attempts. Gaining ballast is increasingly important to me now. Integrity, no matter how it is defined, allows me to persist, to keep going, and to keep myself oriented toward the mysterious source of being.

I want to die, and believe myself capable of going toward the light. I think I would be too afraid of the light, of encountering the truth of my being, if I haven’t placed enough emphasis upon living integrously. Integrity, that mysterious navigational tool, is my hope of becoming fully what I am capable of being. It hurts trying to live up to it, and it hurts even more living without it.

Integrity baffles me, just as it releases me. I am more of what Life intended me to be, because I am so caught up in trying to live fully. Integrity is a gift that requires constant play.

Play — by Lucky

“One of the results of having lived a regime of regularly scheduled days for almost our entire life is that we can easily lose the spirit of play. Not only do our bodys age, but our spirits can mildew a bit, too. Whether we know it or not, Life has lost some of its possibility of abandon, over the years. More importantly, the sense of play, the quality in us, that really keeps us young, after years of having been largely ignored, has been sapped of its electric edge. It may take awhile to retrieve it. But retrieve it we must if we are to let age have free rein in us.

Age is for the revival of the spirit. Age is meant to allow us to play — with ideas, with projects, with friends, with life.”— Joan Chittister from The Gift of Years.

There is a possibility that resides in old age, like never before. Play. The innocence and wonder of childhood flares up again. Old eyes, hearts and spirits experience the world with the same kind of creative reverence and incandescent wonder that graces the very young.

In so doing, the old one’s experience aids Creation. Newness burns brighter, near the end, where an educated experienced light shines forth. Slowly elders, the reborn old, are coming to realize that life still surges in their blood, and that the magnificent miracle has not forsaken them.

Maybe this culture has, mistakenly, but Life hasn’t. Strangely, now at this seemingly broken hour, it calls out of us our true uniqueness, and guides us toward discovering our belonging. The elderly are seedpods, they hold something that cannot be gotten to without the heartbreak and surprise of life-experience. They aren’t the used up ones, instead they are the well-used ones. To release the wisdom, and creative energy of ripeness, inherent in the lives of the old, Nature has provided fun, laughter, comraderie and play.

Play equals fun, and fun equals creative engagement, and that enlivens everything it touches. In fact, there is a continuum that extends from Creation to human play. What is happening at the largest scale we can barely imagine, is also happening locally, when the attitude of play breaks out in someone’s laughing delight. Getting older brings this into perspective. What once belonged only in childhood, suddenly is a gift that graces even the doddering. Some fun takes a lifetime to unfold!

Play isn’t just fun, it is educative.  Creation dances with energy, so do we. Creation plays with form, so do we. Creation explores the non-obvious, ill informed, irrational missteps, so do we. All along we learn, so does the force that animates us. It could be that one of humanity’s highest art forms is play, a creative imaginative engagement with what is. The active edge of the expanding Universe might be right here, in the spirits of those living right now within the dilemmas of Creation, and playing their hearts out.

Play is kind of a secret, a secret that doesn’t comport with our puritanical heritage, so it has kind of a bad name. The idea of it is much worse than the experience. So it, like old folks, is kind of pushed into the shadows. They are immigrants, still looking for a way to be taken in, still looking for the kind of recognition that frees their gifts. They are finding each other, there in the shadows, and something unforeseen is emerging, a new more playful way of being grey.

This is a development that has Evolution buzzing. Like all truly good things, this development is full of paradox. The most frivolous and nonsensical of pursuits contain some of the most mysterious and binding meaning. What appears, and must be held, as an unproductive act, produces the unexpected. The old are suddenly fountains of youth. Creation doesn’t rest, it doesn’t even pause to celebrate its achievements, but from this moment in time, play and ageing are wonderful building blocks for a future worth having.

Impact — by Lucky

There is a part of being human that I’ve always found difficult. I hope that it doesn’t have to always be this way, this hard, but it always has been, and I want to try and do something about it. I’m afraid though. This is one of those things that requires me to ask for help. If that isn’t difficult enough, I know to get at this, in a real way, I have to ask for help from you, the very people my blindness impacts the most.

I can’t help it. I’m only human. That is not only my overused excuse, but it happens to be true.  Addressing this issue is probably going to take all the compassion I can muster, and all you can muster too. Being human means I generate impacts (often hurtful) that I’m not aware of. I am clumsy and blind, and I don’t know know it as much as I need to. Because all of this is so, I need you, and I know you need me. I would like to believe we could deal with the impacts we necessarily have upon, and with, each other.

I am one of, what my friend Jim calls, the “not-sees.” I don’t see some things very well.  What happens is that I do a lot of damage — I’m like the proverbial bull in the china shop — because I’m looking somewhere else, or I’m just unable to see all of the consequences of my actions.

I’ve done a lot of therapy, hell, I’ve been a therapist for a long time. Amongst the many things I did in both those roles, has been operate by the belief that I (one) could stop bumping into, and hurting (and sometimes being hurt by), people. I have been wrong about that. This is another example, though pretty ordinary, of how blind I can be.

Lately, I’ve come to see that my blindness is part of being human. I can see, only partly at best. That awareness has made it easier for me to apologize, but does nothing to help me cause less harm. Now my hope rests upon the company I keep. I know I’m going to bump into them from time to time —I’m fond of saying community is a contact sport — but it seldom goes easily when I do. I’m not pretending I’m not blind —I’m not a climate change denier (claiming we humans have no effect on the world) — in fact, I’m too aware that I do, and it leaves me feeling a regret I have a hard time getting past.

So my basic self-image right now contains an awareness that I am perpetually hurtful to the one’s I say I love. Since I say I love community that poses a real challenge to me. I want to do more than just feel bad about it. So, I’ve come to asking for your help. I know if I could just forgive everyone I wouldn’t have to feel this way, but I don’t want to issue a blanket pardon, that doesn’t adequately address the harm in the world that I (and others) seem to be a part of.

I realize I can’t make all of the hurt go away. I know that pain is sometimes the way Mystery gets in, but it seems that there is more hurt in the world than necessary. I’d like to be part of that changing some.  And, I’m just foolish enough, or immature enough, to think that it can be different, for me, and for all of us. But, I’m currently at the place where I can’t imagine that hurting, the hurting I’m responsible for, being addressed without your help.

I keep thinking about a more active form of forgiveness, one that is more immediate, personal, and natural. My imagination though runs to climate change. Before us, within our experience, there is plenty of evidence of our (we humans) impact upon Earth. Alongside that impact, I want to place the impact we have upon one another. Just as the climate is changing in response to our actions, so is the world of social relations being shaped by our impact upon one another.

I know I can’t help impacting you. I know you can’t help impacting me. But, I don’t live in a world where that is just a random coincidence anymore. I live in a world where I am awash in connection. I know there is little that is actually random about it. Yet, I still live like my social impacts are merely farts in the wind. That no longer seems right.

I need your help to live otherwise. Let’s talk about it. Let’s interact like our contact, our incidental impacts upon each other, are really gifts, gifts that indicate how truly connected we are. I want to celebrate the new awareness that is coming to me later here in life, and I can’t do it without playmates, without others who will share with me the difficult process of dealing anew with my (our) blind ignorance.

I don’t like to know that I am (despite my best efforts) overbearing, controlling, and think too much of myself. I don’t react well to finding out either. But, I can do better. I imagine that if I wasn’t feeling so alone, and so prone, in my isolation, to all kinds of bad feelings, that maybe I could handle knowing more about myself. I also imagine that if I knew I was deeply connected and wanted here, then I could celebrate the little things, the places where we intersect (despite, and even sometimes because of my intransigence).

Connecting asks this of me. I don’t think, despite all my self-reliant alarms, that I can pull this off alone. This is one of those places where I can’t help saying (thank God my disability has forced me into this ability), I need your help.

Please help me! I (words that are taboo in our social reality) need your hand. And, I have reason to suspect, you need mine. Let’s make the most out of our impacts upon each other!

The Tension — by Lucky

I want to spend some time facing one of the most vexing realities I’m confronted with. I haven’t really tried facing this dilemma head on before. It drew my attention recently, and appearing on my radar screen, I began to think this is a phenomenon I run into all the time, and I haven’t really looked at it. Now, I’m stopping to do so. And I’m encountering the reality that what I face now has been ruling me for a long time. I am filled with dread. I don’t want to encounter what I cannot handle, but neither do I want to be ruled by what I fear.

I’ve been feeling a kind of troublesome tension that wracks my awareness and limits me. I’m talking about my awareness of the terminal condition of this world. I know how bad it is. And, I have difficulty knowing. I feel like I should do something right now, and I feel guilty because whatever I would do is not enough. I cannot put this heartache to rest. I’m damned if I do (respond) and damned if I don’t (become passive and guilty).

I feel like I am caught in an avalanche. I should try to survive. I am overwhelmed by the power of what I’m involved in. Survival is not really my call. But neither is just giving in. I vacillate between these two poles, feeling trapped and distorted by my awareness, that this is the reality I’m in. I cannot conceive of a way to make a difference, nor can I do nothing for very long. I ‘m never get off the hook. For a while I can convince myself of a change, then little by little, I realize that change doesn’t really change anything. I live with a certain anxiety that this house of cards is already coming down.

Sometimes I think it should, that I should help it, that my contribution is to add weight to this crumbling structure, to help it fall. But then I just as quickly fear the possibility. I don’t want the human experiment to end on my watch. I feel intensely disloyal.

I don’t really have a place to stand. I’m just uneasy. Anything I do is contaminated by my awareness. Not doing anything, or enough, is equally unsatisfying. I am literally torn apart, if I let myself know what I already know.

I carry this burden. Who doesn’t? I don’t think this just troubles those who are awake, it seems probable to me, that I suffer an awareness, that even when it is not consciously felt, all humanity bears.

I live with an impossible recognition. The nightmare goes on, and if one pays attention, it gets more and more horrifying. Still, I live within it. I can’t help but think about what I might be like if I didn’t have to bear this form of gravity, if, somehow, I wasn’t caught up in these times. Still, I am.

I can feel this weight every time I move. I can feel it when I am still, too. To be honest, it distorts everything I do. I don’t want it to, but it does. This is my environment now. I live with the day-to-day possibility of collapse. All of my interactions are defined, to some extent, by the reality of demise. I don’t really know what kind of human this makes me? I just know that living seems to bear this form of torment.

So it seems to me that modern life contains a kind of anxious tension that our ancestors may have never known. Do you think they could have imagined a time when humans had reason to not trust each other, because we know now how culpable we all are?

I’m discovering something though. In the midst of all this difficult mess, I am finding that I trust more those who are not pretending that crisis isn’t looming. I tend to listen harder to those who let themselves feel the mess we are in. I don’t mean the one’s who are just horrified (and want to do something), but those who are intent upon living within the truth of this world. I tend to listen to, and respect, those who’s hearts are broken by this shattered world, and have the temerity to live, relate, love, and exist torn apart. Their guts hang out, like mine, and I am encouraged.

Strangely, there seems to be nothing so humbling and enlivening as acceptance. The world is crumbling. For some reason this is coaxing the best and worst out of our species. I chose to look at the best. I hope that serves evolution, because it gives me hope. It may be that it takes such extreme conditions to evoke an awareness that can bear a fatal truth. If it does, then I am glad I get to be on the scene, for this moment in our species life.

Switchbacks — by Lucky

I have been reflecting upon a wonderful metaphor/phenomenon that has been occurring in one of the groups I’ve been part of. In what, I think of it as a hallmark, as an elder achievement, that the members of the group experience each other as nourishing. In fact, the group has described themselves as a nutrient-rich environment, where people end up feeding each other. The idea, that we, in all our differences, could be food for each other, is a real testimony, to the learning and growth happening.

It occurred to me, as I gave this poem one last reading, that it spoke of another kind of food that has nourished me throughout my life. You may recall I was greatly touched by the metaphors of “a kind word” and “a bottle of water” that come at the end of the poem. This time I noticed a more difficult and more reliable food source, one I have a much more ambivalent relationship with. Switchbacks. Here, again, is the poem, but this time I urge you to reflect on the food; unexpected and seemingly oppositional change offers.

On the Path to Diamond Head

You climb the steep path of switchbacks,

In the hope of gaining a beautiful perspective. 

The path is rough and broken,

With too many stairs for any one person.

Always wondering how much more is required. 

There!  Below you are others,

Traveling on the same path as you,

Tired and thirsty, slogging through their desire to stop.

If only they could climb straight up,

shortening the endless path of switch back.

They could be where you are now, see what you see, be closer to their goal.

But… isn’t their journey hard enough as it is?

Instead of wishing them your vista,

Why not offer a kind word and a bottle of water?

                                                                                 Jeffrey Young

How many times over the course of my lifetime have I “slogged through my desires” only to find that I am thwarted by something unexpected. This is the kind of food I prefer to ignore, to complain about, and often refuse to eat. Life has fed me with another switchback. Even when I know it is coming, and that I have chosen this path, I fail to appreciate the switchback. Another more ‘beautiful perspective” might be ahead, but only if I will willingly negotiate a twist of fate that I don’t want. This is the kind of kindness, direction, and nourishing I have trouble with.

Switchbacks linger at my edges. They sometimes are indistinguishable from edge phenomena. There before me is the person or situation I don’t like, or the family feeling, or unpleasant truth, I’ve been trying to ignore. They don’t look like nourishing food. I want something else. I don’t want to know myself, or anyone, that much. Still, here it is, the bitter medicine of some greater truth, which propels me forward. Switchbacks make my life better, enriching me, keeping me on the path, guiding me towards completion. They make this life compelling, mysterious, and completely surprising.

Switchbacks add drama to this journey. And yet, I think I could live without them. I don’t like the whiplash and redirection they provide. I’m tired of the climb, tired of the tedium, tired of the predictable ritual of having to turn onto another sloping segment of the journey. Switchbacks may be helping me get there, may be helping me do the impossible, and are probably allowing me to know possibilities I could never have arrived at without them. But, I can’t say I am ever looking forward to them. This is a form of nourishment, which is so undelectable, that I would happily forgo it.

Switchbacks. I can’t live with them, and can’t live without them. It’s a good thing I don’t seem to have any control of them. Despite me, they just knock over my apple cart. They seem to me like some kind of karmic bullies that make the playground an unsafe place. All my efforts to avoid them are smoke signals and signs that guide them in. They are the smelly and unkempt relatives, who keep showing up at my birthday party. I don’t know how they know all my dirty little secrets, but they do, and they aren’t satisfied till everybody else does too. Switchbacks, the food source that keeps on giving, sometimes over feeds me.

I know, I should be grateful. Probably, I am. I have my moments of abstract awareness of some kind of oneness. I even have, fewer admittedly, moments when I genuinely know how blessed I am. Switchbacks carry me to places I wouldn’t willingly go. They are the guarantors of my journey. They seem to reflect some greater knowledge of my potential. In short, they are a blessing and a curse. The journey wouldn’t mean anything, wouldn’t hold any suspense, wouldn’t even be compelling, without them. They are the rocks in the road that let me know I’m getting somewhere.

And, all along, switchbacks are food, real food, providing me with substantial energy, maturity and growth. I’ll probably keep bitching and moaning about not being fed what I want, but I’ll never have a better, more reliable source of nutrition. The journey, my journey, relies on them.  I can’t get over, around, or past them. Mystery makes me through them!

A Kind Word and A Bottle of Water — by Lucky

Recently, I was sitting in my living room with a friend of mine named Jeffrey. We were talking about the many challenges we face by trying to be conscious. Soon the conversation turned to how we could help other path mates. He surprised me with the following poem, which he had written, to address this same question. Two of his metaphors immediately captured my attention — a kind word, and a bottle of water. I want to share the poem with you and inquire further into the make-up of these two offerings. I hope it touches you, as it did me, and that you share your awareness with another climber.

On the Path to Diamond Head

You climb the steep path of switchbacks,

In the hope of gaining a beautiful perspective. 

The path is rough and broken,

With too many stairs for any one person.

Always wondering how much more is required. 

There!  Below you are others,

Traveling on the same path as you,

Tired and thirsty, slogging through their desire to stop.

If only they could climb straight up,

shortening the endless path of switch back.

They could be where you are now, see what you see, be closer to their goal.

But… isn’t their journey hard enough as it is?

Instead of wishing them your vista,

Why not offer a kind word and a bottle of water?

                                                                                 Jeffrey Young

In reflecting upon “the kind word” and “the bottle of water,” I ask. What are they, really? How does one offer them? Who does one see? All along the way, as I reflected, I thought about those who have helped me climb. I may be just grateful enough to pass along some of what enables me to keep going.

As a burgeoning elder responsible to the future, I look to the young ones, sometimes behind me on the path, sometimes ahead, and I want to admire them (a kind word) and I want to refresh them (a bottle of water). But, what do I, who has been struggling empty-handed so long, have to give? My only answer, at this point, is this, a kind word of admiration for who they are becoming, and a bottle of water, some kind of customized nourishment, a little of life’s vitality, to enable them to continue.

As a burgeoning elder responsible to the present, I look to my fellow elders, sometimes behind me on the path, sometimes ahead, and I want to admire them (a kind word) and I want to refresh them (a bottle of water). But, I forget. I spend too much of my time doubting that I might hold anything that could provide succor, inspiration or energy. My hands are full of mistakes. My only answer, at this point, is this, a kind word of admiration for who they are becoming, and a bottle of water, a little of life’s vitality, to enable them to continue.

The latter, I’ve concluded, can only be transferred through adequate relating. The life-force, as I see it, is community (a knowing that the wholeness of all things is behind, and within). This isn’t a belonging, or an achievement, that can be passed on. This is only the solace of sharing a freshly broken-open heart.

The gift of water is the gift of Life. Sharing is what life is about. The climb, is Life’s gift to all of us. How we help each other along the way, is how we honor what has been given to us. Miraculously, at the same time, it is our gift of support for each other. My climb into being fully what the Universe created — more fully myself — is the gift I can best give, and strangely, the one that offers the most nourishment.

May there always be climbers — refreshment in the making!

Growing Older by Lucky

I have been writing about growing older. The process of sitting down and thinking about what I have been learning has taken me to places in my own awareness that I didn’t know existed. Strangely, I‘ve been learning from some mystery source within me. What I realized lately, is such a new idea for me, and is so relevant to what I perceive around me, that I want to share this exploration, because if this idea has any merit, it might decrease our suffering. It has something to do with growing older, something inevitable, that you and I have no control over.

I guess I started consciously aging when I had my stroke. Before then, aging was kind of abstract, a kind of diminishment I was going to go through some day in the future. Then my life was overturned by a long near death experience. The experience itself taught me a lot about this precious miracle we call Life. Afterward, when I realized that I was going to come back to Life, as an older, broken-down, disabled, remnant of a man, I came face-to-face with what it meant to be an old person in a world that focuses on health, production, and eternal doing.

I have been dwelling within this experience for some time now. I bring the perspective and sensitization of my long nightmare. I bring this to being a disabled, brain-damaged man, alive and older. I don’t think I have yet recovered from what happened to me. So, I’m still reeling from the sucker punch Life gave me, the one that broke through my lethargy, and renewed this process of awakening. Wakening anew has meant, among other things, finding out more about entering and occupying the ranks of the old.

In truth, I’m still an infant old person. I’m only 65. I still have the energy to be indignant about how old people are treated, and I have the awareness to know that this is a disservice to all. So, a part of what motivates me to write about this, to care, to try to create a change, is because I hate waste. Its not that the old are cast off — don’t get me wrong that bothers me — but what really irks me, is that perspective, hard-won experience, and wisdom go too.

I live with a fear that haunts me, and makes getting older a restless, anxiety-provoking time. I fear being placed, in my wheelchair, in some back ward somewhere, where nobody knows me or cares about me. Somehow, I know it has happened, and can happen again, perhaps to me. Contrast this fear, with the budding sense I have, that I am just now ripening into what I was meant to be, and you have the raw ingredients for all kinds of tumult. My thoughts are trying to compensate for the remarkable ignorance I’m finding in myself, and in my culture.

Well, these thoughts and feelings happened upon something the other day, which has shaken me, and makes this a bad dream, one I dearly want to wake from. I already have a hard time being a disabled person (the disabled were the first people the Nazi’s tried to exterminate). I’ve had to learn all the difficult lessons that most people fear will come with the debilities of old age. I have had to learn how to be dependent. I’ve had to learn how to ask for help. I’ve had to face my own diminishment, to know my own incapacity, to sit with helplessness. I know I am feared. People practice “gaze aversion” with me all the time. I have had to deal with being a product of this culture. I have had to battle with my own internalized prejudice against being disabled. Basically, I’ve hated and feared my self.

Luckily, I’ve been at this for a while. I’ve learned what I had to, and overcome most of my own prejudice. By and large, I’m now immune to most of the prejudice directed my way. Life has granted me the time, friends and necessity to de-personalize most of this. But, what I just discovered, is that I, and other overtly disabled people like me, are the advance guard. We are on the same continuum as everybody else. The old are being treated just like the disabled. They are made invisible, irrelevant, and treated like a drain on society. Its easy (relatively) to cast me off because I’m visibly broken, its also easy to cast off the grey, slow, forgetful, aging ones. If you don’t think you are being cast off just check-in on how isolated and alone you are, and look around and see how many of your friends are old and grey just like you.

I sometimes hurt when older people don’t see my disability, because then they are also not seeing the truth of their own aging. I’m lucky I don’t have chronic pain, but I do have chronic awareness. I feel, through some other means than my body, the emotions of the moment, the tides of awareness, the reality that is to hard to take. For better, or worse, I reside there.  I can feel the cost that everyone is paying for not seeing what is hidden in old age, disability and our basic human-ness.

I am big, vital, articulate and full of Life, so people frequently don’t see me as disabled. That is good because I’m more than broken down, but not seeing that I am also disabled, that I am struggling just to keep up, negates who I am, and worse yet, ignores the fragile humanity of the latter years. Old age is feared because it is treated like a disability. I can say this because I recognize it, because I am there, because I want more from, and more for, my kind.

Growing older is nightmarish, but it also provides glimpses of how heaven is right here within reach. I think these glimpses, which reside in the failing sight of the old, and the disabled, are precious, and should be a regular part of our collective journey into mystery.