Wandering Elder

I stood looking down the road, the flashing red and white lights dancing across the trees and sparkling off the broken glass strewn across the pavement.   The lights shone off the engine and the back of the tow truck creating a small pocket of luminescence in the black night of a new moon.   The cool breeze of the nighttime hours played across the back of my neck questioningly, as if to ask, ‘what brings you out here at this hour?’   A glance at the aerodynamically challenged car was my only answer.   It was beyond the time where I was useful in my capacity as a firefighter.   We were there “in case,” of which on this night there had been no fire, but I was ready as were my compatriots.   Once the critical “in case” moments pass, most of us fulfilled the role of spectator. Yet I found myself drawn to the edge of the artificially illuminated pocket created by the colorful explosion of tragedy.   With my back to the lights, I walked with almost m...

"By all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another."  So begins Alan Watts' book The Wisdom of Insecurity .  I might cite him from time to time, as I undoubtedly will cite others here and there.  At this time, though, I am not reviewing the book.  The point from which I do wish to draw is that idea of a spark of light.  What is it that we do with that time between the first awakening and the final sleep?  What is it that we are, and who do we seek to become?  Philosophical, theological, metaphysical, skeptical, even physical journeys are my intent on this page.  What I have to offer are merely observations.  That's all.  And, I would surmise, in the end all any of us have to offer is what we have learned, what we have observed, and the recognition that while we are all in vastly different places in life, we are all that each other has in the end.  This is a short opening...