27-01-2010, 10:25 PM
Peter, it doesn't matter what my age or experience is -- though I'll provide a brief explanation below. Personally, I am not afraid. I've already lived fullly, loved much, been loved, and more. Jensen is not my friend, though I've corresponded, so much as he is my educator, a provocateur of my mind and heart, a teacher, a fellow being. He -- and, I am guessing, you -- correctly point to the larger vessel of life. I am an exile right here where I am. I agree with the need for speed and urgency, and the need to socially connect despite surveillance -- I raised the point because some get scared away from even dialoguing with anyone who will get their name listed as having peaked at a web site or e-mailed someone who -- gasp! -- thinks and feels.
My story is to some extent available on my blog, or elsewhere... I am 60, have two kids and two grandchildren, roomed with a CO* and SDS member while I was enrolled in state university ROTC Special Forces unit (talk about an awakening!), spent my life in the field of EMS (focused on saving lives), have assembled a library on mind/body/spirit empowerment, am an ecumenical who is a baptized Presbyterian, raised Methodist/Congregational, lapsed away from it all, and gravitates back and forth between the Gospel according to Thomas, Taoism, Buddhism, native American sources, and jazz. I have had two major specific and memorable 'peak experiences' and a few minor ones that showed me -- without ingestible impetus -- the mysterium tremendum. You rightly called them epiphanies; I've studied Ken Ravizza.
I died once, briefly [phew!], during a chemical stress test, and hovered near death post-op open heart for days, and then got up -- very slowly -- over a period of months to recover from a peri-operative complex multiplex mostly-motor, mostly-left-sided stroke. So some state security boogeymen don't particular frighten me.
I don't have much time left myself -- that's not grim, just reality -- my docs tell me I'm good for another 12-15 years easy... but I want those remaining years to have been well and fully invested in support of my grandkids' possibilities. I think our greater task is to insure that time capsules that insulate the future against such depradation and degradation are buried where they can easily be found -- in the hearts and minds of the youth of the world.
* I named my first-born after him, and his first-born will carry the name as a middle name.
My story is to some extent available on my blog, or elsewhere... I am 60, have two kids and two grandchildren, roomed with a CO* and SDS member while I was enrolled in state university ROTC Special Forces unit (talk about an awakening!), spent my life in the field of EMS (focused on saving lives), have assembled a library on mind/body/spirit empowerment, am an ecumenical who is a baptized Presbyterian, raised Methodist/Congregational, lapsed away from it all, and gravitates back and forth between the Gospel according to Thomas, Taoism, Buddhism, native American sources, and jazz. I have had two major specific and memorable 'peak experiences' and a few minor ones that showed me -- without ingestible impetus -- the mysterium tremendum. You rightly called them epiphanies; I've studied Ken Ravizza.
I died once, briefly [phew!], during a chemical stress test, and hovered near death post-op open heart for days, and then got up -- very slowly -- over a period of months to recover from a peri-operative complex multiplex mostly-motor, mostly-left-sided stroke. So some state security boogeymen don't particular frighten me.
I don't have much time left myself -- that's not grim, just reality -- my docs tell me I'm good for another 12-15 years easy... but I want those remaining years to have been well and fully invested in support of my grandkids' possibilities. I think our greater task is to insure that time capsules that insulate the future against such depradation and degradation are buried where they can easily be found -- in the hearts and minds of the youth of the world.
* I named my first-born after him, and his first-born will carry the name as a middle name.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"