(Photo: My favorite Ed Gulley wind chime, Spoons, on the back porch, Thanks, Ed)

I call them Identity Troughs, periods or events I see as landmarks, building blocks to my identity, always at peril in a world without boundaries. Tonight, the last Acting Class in what has been an important growing and earning experience for me.

And also, my new weekly radio show, Talking To Animals, tomorrow, Wednesday from one to three, an impossible mission that might, in fact, still be possible. The challenge of life, to try things, stretch myself, grow and learn. And improve, always improve.

Tonight will be the last and only rehearsal for “The Story Of Red,” my personal monologue, a story that grew in my life and took focus in my class. I’m not really presenting the story as an actor would, or as acting.

I’m no actor.

But as a writer and story-teller, the class has reaffirmed that identity for me in unexpected ways.

Many thanks to Christine Decker and to Red and to  T.S. Eliot, who inspired me as always with his beautiful poems, but who also helped me to see what I am and what I am not.

I am not usually afraid of talking in public, but I am somewhat nervous about this one, I want to do honor to Red, and I am determined to improvise rather than memorize and prepare, I want the story to be real and from the heart.

Sometimes, when I talk about Red, I do cry, but I don’t see the story as sad but quite joyous and affirming.  you don’t lament great gifts. It is hard for me to know he is dying, but I am committed to respecting life rather than denying it or emotionalizing it.

So I hope I do it well, for his sake as well as mine.

Both of these things are identity troughs, against a backdrop of getting older, sometimes feeling frail and vulnerable, as older people often do. I grow old, I grow old, said the Eliot monologue, that part touched my heart, yet I revel in the chance to read out, push my own boundaries, and take a fresh look at who I am and who I want to be.

Until the last breath, for me, for Red, I will live my life fully.

This week, I continue to pursue the very spiritual idea of being the beloved.  I am faced with the call to become who I am meant to be, a lifelong quest.

Becoming the Beloved is the great spiritual journey we have to make if we seek the richness of  a spiritual life. St. Augustine wrote “My soul is restless until it rests in you, O’God.”

For some, the search is for God, for me, I seek my own idea of God, I am always struggling in my erratic way  to discover the fullness of Love, always yearning for the truth, for a taste of the divine.

I think trying to act has helped me to find a kind of truth, I can only look for something I have or know, something that is already inside of me. I think that is where the writer and the actor come together as one. How can I search for beauty and truth unless beauty and truth live somewhere inside of me?

Red in his own way is always looking out for me, and he has helped me to see more clearly and more honestly were I am in life. I felt that in the acting class.

Paul Tillich writes that it is our destiny and the destiny of everything in our world that we must come to an end. Every end that we experience in nature and mankind speaks to us with a loud voice: you will also come to an end.

Thanks for the class.