#600 A New Path?

What does it mean to live? To embrace life? To fight for your life? I keep returning to the same ideas lately. If you've been following along, I'm sure you've noticed. That may be a symptom of an increasingly disordered mind, or it may be a result of the more contemplative personal habits I've been practicing. Whichever better describes my state of mind these days, I want to talk about fighting some more.

I have another friend who is dying. There's no easy way to say that. The doctors have lowered his prognosis from "a couple years," to "a few months." He isn't in physical pain right now. He can still get up, go out, drive himself places. He still exercises. He doesn't need you to feel sorry for him. He isn't giving up on life.

He's a hero to me. I wonder how I would respond in his place? I hope I would have some of the courage and strength that he has.

He and I are part of a community. We meet a couple times a week. Our bond is wonderful and horrible. Each of us has experienced hearing the words, "You have cancer," and lived the aftermath of that moment. We all reacted differently, some with hope, some with anger, some with grief, most of us with a combination of all those things. What we didn't do - what we never allowed ourselves to do - was to give up. We never gave up on life. When our community - our cancer family - when we learned of the change in our friend's medical status, we reacted differently, too. Some laid hands on him and prayed. Some held back tears. Some related stories of miraculous cures and sudden scientific discoveries. We made jokes that would scandalize outsiders. We listened silently, feeling our friend's suffering in our own darkest fears. Each in our own way, we tried to project some of our own strength into our brother. He will need it. And we will not give up on him. I don't see him giving up on himself, either.

But "don't give up," isn't really a strategy, is it? What is it that I'm not giving up? What is the positive action implied by that refusal to quit? What does it mean to live until you die? 

Years ago, I chose the path of a warrior. I chose to fight. I battled with my weight, my athleticism, my depression, my habits... mostly, I went to war against cancer. I tried to help where I could. Raised money for organizations. Offered to listen or to help survivors to stay fit and active. Built a career around creating communities of survivors who helped themselves and one another. Went to funerals. Saved their pictures. Honored their lives by fighting beside them. Honored their memories by helping others to fight.

I've always equated "don't give up" with "don't stop fighting," but lately I have started to question that plan. Maybe fighting isn't the only option. And maybe there is a place in life's garden where the path splits. Choose the warrior's way and keep fighting, or take this other way, a path of peace.

It sounds so foreign to me, this notion of making peace with cancer. With mine. With yours. With the cancer that makes people I love suffer. With the cancer that changed my life and haunts my secret fears for the future. Cancer has always been my enemy. I've imagined its sneering face and cruel heart. I've held the hand of a beautiful, dying young man, prayed for his rattling breath to stop, and hated the murderer growing inside his frail body. How do I make peace with that? How do i accept it?

Ahhhh...

How can I not accept it? Next to death itself, cancer is just about the realest thing there is. If I say I'm fighting cancer, what am I fighting? Am I fighting reality? Am I fighting the truth? 

I can't fight the truth of what might happen, because I can't know what might happen. Can't fight the truth of what has happened; that ink has long-since dried. All I can fight is what is happening now. Fight back the feelings. Fight down the nausea. Fight to stand. Fight to sleep. Jesus, no wonder I'm so tired all the time. I am living my life at war with reality.

I've been at war with the truth.

Nowadays, I'm looking for an alternative. That's why I've been meditating. I've spent a lifetime talking to God. Now, I'm listening. I'm learning to see and hear what is really there. Truth doesn't need my approval or even my acceptance. Maybe, Truth doesn't need anything from me at all. Maybe I don't have to fight for my life, because when I stop and sit and breathe for  a moment, I can't help but notice that I'm alive right now.  I have my life. For how long? I can't answer that. No prognosis or actuary or oracle can tell me. No tea leaves or entrails or star chart can peek into tomorrow, or even tell me what I'll have for lunch this afternoon. All I have is now. All I have is life.

Maybe my task isn't to wrestle my life from cancer. Maybe my task is to live life with cancer. I know that sounds like I'm just playing with words, But I think they describe two radically different paths. 

And it feels like a part of the garden that's worth exploring. I think I'll be back again.

Peace, y'all.

Birth and Rebirth

 Isn't she beautiful? Our home. Our refuge. She protects, sustains, provides, and ultimately receives us back to herself. She will surely outlive us, a little worse for the wear; but she will heal as she always does. And when the time comes for her passing, she will do it with grace, returning matter and energy back to the cosmic mother who bore her. From there, who can say? She may become part of the moon or neighbor planets. Her rock and dust and ash may bond together into new objects, never seen before, slipping easily into orbit around the sun. And when that mighty star finally meets its own end, Earth's new life may take her to distant systems, or one day become food for a whole new universe. Her elements, her heat and light and beautiful music will endure and transform into things we cannot imagine. Such is the way of eternity.

This is the way I picture eternal life, anyway. Not an everlasting reward or punishment, not a unending karmic reboot, but a glorious cycle of birth and rebirth. A beautiful economy of matter and energy, delivering the new, and receiving the old with the promise that nothing is ever lost. Everything will return.

There are ancient traditions that teach about a soul that returns again and again, staggering its way toward enlightenment. I just can't get my head around that. Others teach about eternal light or everlasting fire that wait for souls who didn't live their flash of life here on earth by the right rules. That's never sat right with my heart either. 

But this, this feels like coming home to me. This is a God who makes sense. A rational God. A just God. A loving God. A God whose kingdom is contained inside itself. The Kingdom of God is within you. Among you. The Buddha, the capacity of enlightenment is within you. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

George Harrison expressed the great truth he found in the Hindu tradition when he sang "Give me Light, Give me Love, Keep me free from birth." I don't know enough about what he believed to understand that, but I feel differently. I find such comfort in the idea of rebirth. I love the idea that my Grampa Johnson and George Gershwin and Thomas Payne and Emily Dickinson all live on in me whenever I sing their songs or honor their lives or read their poetry or use the name my Grampa Robert gave me. When I climb the mountain to the place where my parents are buried, I know that the grass I kneel on is alive because they lie beneath it. And I hope that when I have returned to the earth in whatever form that takes, that my life will continue in the lives I have touched, and that the grass and trees will find good use for me. If I have blessed anyone in this life, I hope they will keep that love alive by loving someone else. 

And I find great joy in the knowledge that when the Earth returns to her Mother, we will return with her. 

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

I Corinthians 15: 51,52 (KJV)

I won't pretend that Paul had the same kind of resurrection in mind that I envision, but I have to admit that I like the resonance.

Peace, y'all.

The Way of the Wounded Warrior

For years, I've thought of myself as a warrior. The one who didn't die. The Amazing Cancer Boy® who kicked that bastard's ass. Since then, I've fancied myself to be a maker of champions, a builder of cancer victors. I've helped some people, and done some good. I've worked with survivors who have lived and a few who have died, and always my message was the same. Don't you ever give up. Don't you ever stop fighting for your life. Don't you quit on you.

I get a lot more credit for beating cancer than I deserve, I think. That's not false modesty, I'm being candid. People around me shot me full of chemicals and radiation, pumped food into my stomach tube, walked me to the bathroom, cleaned my piss and vomit off the floor. People lifted prayers and wrote notes and sent gifts and visited on the mornings when I wasn't passed out. I make myself out to be this mighty champion, but the truth is all I really did was just lie there and take my pills, too stubborn to die while the real heroes did all the work.

The one thing I never did was to stop fighting. When they told me my cancer was gone, I started fighting my way back to life. I walked around the block. Lifted weights. Jogged on the treadmill. Registered for a 3K, a 5K, a 10K. I joined the Y and found coaches and trainers who helped me take my battle to a broader field. I fought beside other cancer warriors, other survivors who refused to yield. Ran a handful of half-marathons and two full 26.2 mile marathons. And I became a coach. Thirteen years later, doctors send their patients to me and I help those courageous people to find the grit and strength to climb back to life, just like I did. I am a warrior.

I didn't start out that way. I was the fat kid. The last one to the finish line and the last one picked, whatever the sport. I worked hard at the things I was already good at, and when I wasn't good, I quit. I learned that people liked to hear me sing, so I sang. They liked to laugh when I told jokes, so I became a comedian. I went to school and became an actor and entertained strangers in the dark. When I didn't like a job, I quit and got a new one. When I didn't get the part, I blamed the world. Once, when I decided that I didn't like living, I even tried to die. I was not prepared to be a fighter. I was prepared to be a star. 

Cancer had another plan for me. I could fight or I could die. So I learned to fight. And with a lot of help, I won.

But that was a long time ago. I was a young kid of 50, back then. I'm an Old Soldier now. I growl at the cocky kids and I whisper the old war stories and I remember the fallen. I have memories that will never go away, and while I wouldn't call it PTSD, there are certain medical sounds and smells that can trigger me into a state of near panic. And in the past few months, I've learned that I have some war wounds that I didn't know were there.

I've seen more specialists than I can remember, and one of them told me, "I expect these arterial occlusions started with your radiation treatments. They've probably been getting worse every day since then." So the treatment that saved my life is also slowly starving my brain of blood. Hmm. That's a lot to take in. 

It isn't going to kill me. But it is going to change things. And I need to be prepared to live with the reality that I have no idea how things are going to change. 

I have a great team on my side. A whole bunch of smart-as-a-whip kid-doctors and a couple of geezers I really know and trust. I saw those two today. First was my GP. She's been my doc since before the cancer, and she knows me well. (Please don't tell her I called her a geezer. She would not take it well.) We went over last week's fainting episode, and she made some changes to my meds. We're working to manage the chemistry that may be leading to my spells. I'll let you know...

Then I saw my shrink. We don't go back nearly as far, but this guy really gets me. If you have ever gone looking for a therapist, and found the wrong one, you know how scary that search can be. Finding this funny old guy with the crazy hair and the shabby office (yes, he even has a funny accent) was a godsend. We talked about things today, and he said some really helpful stuff. "So, what have you learned about these spells?" 

"Well, I almost always feel them coming on. If I stop and sit down, they pass. If I try to fight them off, that's when I pass out."

"Ahh..."

He loves to say "Ahh..." almost as much as I love hearing it. It usually means that I've answered my own question. Then we both laugh.

"So cancer taught you to be a fighter. Fighting has kept you alive. But now fighting knocks you on your ass. Was do you make of that?"

"Maybe fighting this won't work. Maybe I have to accept that things are different, now. Like an old man who has to live with gout or seizures."

"So what? You just give up?"

"No. Hell no. I'm not going to stop living because I'm afraid. But I how do I live if I can't fight for my life?"

"Maybe you just live."

He loves to say this kind of shit, too. We never laugh after these moments. I look at the carpet, (which hasn't been vacuumed since the Clinton administration,) and at the sun setting in the filthy windows and the books stacked on shelves and tables and in brown paper bags, and I check the clock to see how much of the hour is left. Then I stick a toe in the water.

"I just live. OK...? Annnnd...?"

"Maybe you live your life, and you make room for this new thing that is part of it. You don't like it. You didn't invite it. You wish it were not true. But there it is. You will get dizzy sometimes. You will have to stop and sit and gather yourself sometimes. And then it will pass. And then you continue living your life. Do you think that's possible?"

See what I mean? The old kook gets me. I have always liked doing the things I already knew I was good at. I was good at singing, so I sang. I was good at acting, so I acted. I was good at fighting cancer, so I fought.

Well now, I finally have to learn to do something that I'm not good at at all: I have to learn to be weak and restricted by something that no amount of will power can overcome. I've spent my whole life wanting to be a hero. Now I have to learn how to be a human being.

My battle days are over. The Amazing Cancer Boy® has hung his sword over the mantle and tucked his cape and tights in mothballs in the bottom dresser drawer. I still have work to do, warriors to train, hearts to inspire. But not as a superhero. Not anymore. Never was, I guess. Today, I'm a wounded warrior, weary and battle scarred. Once, at great cost to many people, I kicked cancer's ass. I will carry the marks of that victory on my body for the rest of my life. 

Others have paid so much more dearly. I'm so very lucky to be here. I intend to stick around for a long time. But I'm going to have to learn another way of life. Fighting isn't the answer. Cancer has left me a little reminder of our time together, and I can't fight this. But I don't have to let it win, either. I can learn to carry it along with me. We can live together.

Old soldiers do die, eventually. But if they are lucky, before that happens, they learn a new way to live. That's my new job.

So, the next time you see me siting on the end of a treadmill, boxing gloves at my feet, slack jawed and glassy eyed, don't worry. Stand my water bottle back upright and give me a fist-bump. I'm just chilling with my new training partner. But we ain't quitting. 

We still have a lot of races to run together.

Connections

I've been spending some time reading a little book by Thich Nhat Hahn called Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, (Berkeley Publishing, 1999.) It isn't a book about religion, really, though it touches on subjects that have been sacred to billions of people for thousands of years. It is really a book about living, about reality, and about... well... about connections.

"Thay"

Thick Nhat Hanh (1926 - 2022) was a Vietnamese monk whose students lovingly referred to him as "Thay" which means Teacher. His life story is fascinating, and I hope to learn and share a lot more about him in the coming months. Though I won't get the chance to meet him, I've been getting to know him through his words on YouTube and books that he has published. He is a teacher in the best sense of the word, pointing the attention of the student toward something greater, not just promoting himself and his own cleverness. He's a quiet, funny, humble guy, and I have already learned a lot from him.

In my morning reading, I came across a passage where Thay writes about interconnectedness. This is a fundamental Buddhist idea about how nothing in the universe stands alone. We are ever-changing parts of the ever-changing whole from which we come, and to which we return. He talks about how a piece of bread - whether it is a bran muffin, a bowl of cereal, or a communion wafer - contains the whole universe. It contains not only the grain that was milled, but also the rain that nurtured it, the sunshine, the minerals from the earth, even the breath of the sower who spread the seed and the sweat of the reaper who gathered it. All are taken into our mouths when we consume the bread. Our body will use the energy and the nutrients we eat to restore and repair and remake itself. When I drink my morning coffee and eat a piece of toast, I am intimately connected to everything that made them possible. I taste the hands of bakers and touch the hearts of the stars.

This isn't pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo, It's self-evident. It requires no leap of faith to say that I have a relationship with the world around me. You don't have to "believe" in anything. Actions have consequences and causes have effects. Things make things happen. We affect one another. We are connected.

In another passage, Thay talks about waves and water.  

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura)
Katsushika Hokusai, c.1830-1832

The waves are the water, but if a wave tries to understand water in terms of ups and downs, I and you, then a wave will not be able to touch water. A wave, in order to touch water, must get rid of all these notions. The wave has ups and downs, but the water is free from ups and downs. The wave believes that she has birth and death, that there is birth and the wave comes up, the the wave goes down and there is death, But water is free from all that. So if the wave is trying to understand water in those terms and notions, he will never arrive at touching water. (Coming Home, p. 100)

A wave's identity, it's "self" is only temporary. It rises from the water, and returns to the water. The wave rises and falls, but the water continues on. Think of a leaf that buds in the spring, opens its face toward the summer sun, feeds the branches through its stem, then falls to the earth and decays, becoming the minerals and elements that the roots absorb to produce the next year's foliage and fruit. Does the leaf die? Or is it reborn again and again in the living tree of which is a part?

Birth and rebirth

There are two hard ideas here, both are foreign to my Christian brain, and both are pretty important to Buddhist thought. First is the idea of "no-self." I'm not sure yet what that really means, but think it means that there is no enduring "me" to live on after I die. I think it means that what comes after me is what came before me. Life. Breath. Water. Wisdom. Love. It's hard for me to think that there isn't a "soul" that will continue to live and move and have its being after I die, but it's kind of liberating, too. There are a couple of things about life that I'd be happy to set aside. When I compare burning lakes, wings and harps, and being used for parts by the next generation, I'm not entirely put-off by the third option.

The second hard idea - and this one will have to wait for another day - is the Eastern tradition of reincarnation. It's the idea that our next life will be determined by Karma: the consequences of actions in our previous life. At least that's how I understood it from my 10th grade social studies class. I won't lie. I could have paid closer attention. Most of my homework centered on a little brunette that year. I was pretty distracted. And yes, I still live with the consequences of that choice from time to time. Decades separate us, but we are still connected.

I don't know what I think about reincarnation. It is unlike so much of what I'm learning about Buddhism because it asserts a supernatural realm that I can't see in nature. Reducing suffering through detachment is a pretty rational idea. Coming back from the dead to give life another try feels like religion to me. I can see my tap water turning to steam when I boil it. I can't quite wrap my head around Sophie the cat coming back as the Queen of England. I'm pretty sure Sophie would consider it a down-grade. 

What was I talking about? Connections. Right.

There is a pretty important question waiting out in the garden among all these lovely Buddhist flowers: how does all this interconnectedness matter when it comes to the way I treat people?  I think it matters a lot. If we are all coming from the same source and going to the same destination, then the differences between us are pretty insignificant. Likewise, the things we think and say and do to separate us from one another are also insignificant. Your church, my politics, her gender, his race, their education, our nationality... All this stuff is temporary as a ripple in a pond that rolls to the shore and is gone. What remains? What matters?

Connections. That's what matters. The grace I give to myself. The compassion I receive from a stranger. The space I hold for a friend. The listening. The showing-up. The pitching-in. Connections.

I was raised to believe in a God who loved his creatures so much that he became one of them to show them how to live and love one another. Now that's connection. Can we honor our creator any more than by honoring the life and love that connects us?

Hearts and Ashes

There is something so poetic and beautiful about starting Lent on St. Valentine's day. Ash Wednesday has a kind of liturgical force that Valentine's day - co-opted as it has been by chocolatiers and greeting card companies - just can't carry off. Valentine's day is a big secular deal because it generates commerce during the cold season between Santa and the Bunny, and it also creates lots of good feelings among the romantic crowd.

Ash Wednesday, on the other hand is one of the biggies. Although it's barely marketable - "Happy Lent" cards, anyone? - even Sunday-morning-only types will show up to work with smudged foreheads on the first day of the Great Fast before Easter. It's always seemed to me to be a grim day, like Good Friday. Sunshine never feels quite right on Ash Wednesday, (and in these latitudes, the winter skies usually cooperate.) The prayer is unique and unmistakable, "From dust were you made, and to dust you shall return." This is weighty, gloomy stuff. "Here's some soot smeared on your face to remind you that you're going to die. Have a nice Lent."

How do you reconcile these two holy days: one that reminds us of the joy of smooching and another that reminds us that... well.... life is pretty much a little pile of dirt waiting to be blown back to the big pile from which it came?

As a matter of fact, I think they fit together pretty gracefully. In the Gospel lesson for Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of something that the Celebrity Christian Industry could do a much better job of remembering:

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Matthew 6:1

It seems like a weird instruction to give people just before you slap a black dollop of muck on the middle of their forehead. I once had a priest tell me, "If you are proud you received ashes this morning, you should wash them off. If you're embarrassed, leave them on." I like the perversity of that. (If you ask me, there have always been way too many clean faces walking around churches.) And the end of the lesson is even harder to swallow than a walnut creme disguised as a chocolate covered cherry:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Matthew 6: 19-21

Which reminds me of my current study and contemplative voyage into the mind of Siddhartha Gautama, the man they called Buddha (which means, "enlightened one.") He believed  that desire was the cause of all suffering. He taught that our thirst for things we do not have, our desire that reality should be something other than what it is; this attachment to what we want is what causes us to suffer and separates us from reality. It alienates us from the universe from which we were made, and to which we will one day return like ashes in the wind.

I'm gonna be honest, now. That paragraph sums up pretty much everything I understand (or misunderstand) about Buddhism. I like learning about it. But I'm humbled by it. I don't want to pretend I have anything to teach anybody on the subject. I'm just saying, if you're curious, it might be worth your time. If nothing else, I'm learning why most people don't take Buddha any more seriously than they take Jesus: both teachers said some really hard things about suffering, and desire... and love.

And that brings me back to Valentines day. Because if you can look past the Whitman Samplers and the roses from Krogers and the shoe box full of cards from classmates and candle light dinners - which are all great things, in my opinion - if you peek even beyond that almost forgotten Turkish priest, old Valentine himself, who somehow wound up being the patron saint of lovers, beekeepers, and people with epilepsy, for god's sake - what you will find behind all that is a day to remember the best thing in the universe. Today, whether we are young and in love for the first time, old with only memories, or fumbling around in the weeds someplace in between, we take a moment to honor Love. With a capital L. Love that creates. Love that heals. Love that binds and forgives and transcends. Gratuitous, selfless Love that moths cannot destroy and thieves cannot steal.

Love. Heavenly treasure. The Sanskrit word that Buddha used is Mettā. In New Testament Greek, it's καλοσύνη or "kalosyni." The Hebrew scriptures called it חֶסֶד or "chesed." (And yes, I'm showing off, and yes, I'm faking those transliterations as best as Professor Google will let me.) In each case, the word is translated to mean "loving-kindness," and when Jesus uses it, it is the defining quality of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom that he said was among us and within us. The nirvana that Buddha taught awaited anyone who could free themselves from desire and suffering. The kingdom of loving-kindness.

But hey, you do you. Celebrate what you wish on Valentines day. Celebrate having a sweetheart's arms around you or celebrate being free from the clutches of some asshole. Celebrate your independence. Celebrate your friends. Celebrate your hope for the future or your bitterness about the past. Post a meme. Give a flower. Share a bon-bon. Hug the dog. Make the call. Say the prayer. Or just sit quietly and be grateful for a world where some little "enlightened one's" heart is tripping just a bit because somehow they caught a glimpse, however fleeting, of the holy loving-kindness that illuminates the gardens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Do that for a second, will you? Do it today. See the love that's among you and within you. Rattle your rosary. Sit on your cushion. Crank up your chakras. Use your third eye, if you're into that. Just don't put it off. I mean, "ashes to ashes," right?

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning 
of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now 
kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the 
earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our 
mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is 
only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; 
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Liturgy for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 264

Water and Spirit

Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

John 3:4-8

Breathing in, I am born. Breathing out, I die. What I think of as my first breath was not the first breath. What I call my last breath will be followed by so many more in breaths and out breaths: births and deaths; water and spirit.

My friend is dying. That happens more and more as I grow older. You would think you'd get used to it. I don't. Each death is like an amputation. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls," right? When one of us dies, we all die.

Will she end? Will she be gone from existence? Of course not! Our bodies are returned to the earth and air from which we came. We are once again water and spirit to become new breath, new lives, new births. The love we received lives on in the lives of our beloved ones. Mark Antony was only half right: "The evil that men do lives after them," yes, but the good is not "interred with their bones," It lives. The River of Life flows on.

My friend will die soon. Her life with cancer will be transformed into something new. Her suffering will end. We who shared her life will suffer for what we've lost. Her smile. Her voice. Her company. But we will not die. Not yet. We will live and her love, her goodness, even her body and breath will live in us. Water and spirit. Earth and breath.

I don't know what the Kingdom of God is. I used to know. Like the Prophet Dylan, "I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now." But I have a sense, an inkling that the Kingdom that is not of this world is something like a river that flows forever. In the Kingdom of God we are all swimmers in waters where we breath and move and have our being. My breath becomes yours. My body becomes yours.

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

Luke 17: 20-21

When my friend has died, has breathed her "last breath," she will remain in the Kingdom of God with all of us. We will look to the earth and say, "this is her body." We will breath from the air and say, "this is her spirit." We will love one another as she loved us. And the River of Life will flow. The Kingdom of God will endure among us.

Breathing in, I am born.

Breathing out, I die.

I love you, sweet friend. Thank you for living. Thank you for your life.