Every morning, the sun rises over the big barn and falls on this very old bottle – we dug it out of the ground in the woods of Bedlam Farm. I  think every morning of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the most wonderful writer I have read. He has dementia now, I am told, and rarely leaves his Mexico City house. He wrote once that we are not only born once, when our mothers give birth to us, but that life requires us to give birth to ourselves again and again. That is, I suppose the hero journey, for those foolish and restless enough to try and make it. It can bring great pain and loss or great gain. Every morning, when the sun hits the old bottle, I resolve to give birth to myself again, to wipe the slate clean, to experience the miracle of rebirth.

I wipe the slate clean. What happened before does not matter. My struggles and disappointments, my laments and confusions, losses and embarrassments, are not relevant today, no one cares about them, not even me, and like the poet says,  the world moves on, the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, nor all your piety and wit cannot change a word of it (Omar Khayyam). Today, this morning, I am reborn, I am beginning my life anew, and the rest of my life will be what I make of it.

What I mean to make of it today is this: to be grateful for my life, and to speak well of it. To find love and celebrate it every day. To kneel before the creative spark and seek out the color and light and love in the world and remind people that they exist and are strong. I will seek to know the truth about myself, to be authentic and to use whatever gifts and powers I have for good. To be connected to other human beings.  And to kneel before the wisdom of the donkeys and the dogs, and listen to the messages these profoundly spiritual beings have for me.