I look at my life as one great adventure after another, good, bad, uplifting, and painful.

All of my experiences and adventures are teachers; each one reveals something new and different about me, my life, my work, my health, my marriage.

I am always learning how to accept life rather than be continuously shocked, angered, or regretful about what life can do. In this way, drama diminishes, wisdom and truth gain a bit.

We all suffer pain; we all can find joy. The great challenge is how to understand our lives and accept them. I can testify that if I can’t learn to love myself, I could never learn to love anybody else.

Life is a mix of things, often surprising, unpredictable, frightening, or joyous. It’s sometimes hard to see it from below.

Living to me is like riding on a giant Ferris wheel; every time it comes to the top, the view is different.

I see this now as one adventure after another: getting a dog, getting divorced, the Mansion, Bishop Maginn High School, buying a farm, rescuing a donkey, meeting the Amish,  the Army of Good for sure, my Leica camera, the shearer, and farrier coming,  my blog, my crack-up, Maria, my open heart surgery, the death of friends,  my foot surgery Wednesday, putting together another piece in the puzzle that life us.

I’m not a Christian, and I don’t proselytize or preach.

I share what I am learning, and people can take it or leave it. I’m grateful for the people who take it in one way or another. They give my life meaning.

I have a bunch of spiritual thinkers I read often, Merton, Nouwen, Berry, Lewis, Jesus, among others. Each one offers me a new way to look at my life.

Each is a great adventure all of its own. My work is about being reborn in spirit. I remember reading the teachings of Jesus, who looked at the human condition through the eyes of love and taught people how to look at themselves and their lives “from above and not from below.”

Anger and fear, and grievance are dark clouds; they obscure our vision and stunt our spiritual goals. This is how I see the wrenching conflict in our country; it is a contest, really, between love and anger.

“I come from above,’ Jesus told his disciples,” and I want you to be reborn from above so that you will be able to see with new eyes.”

In a sense, this is what my spiritual journey is all about – looking at reality from a higher place, a place of compassion, empathy, and honesty, a place of whatever God me or anybody else chooses to follow.

I see this work bear fruit when I have surgery, from the heart to the foot. I don’t fear this or lament my life or use surgery as a vehicle to complain about doctors of health care or the cost of things.

I look at it from above, and I see it as another adventure, another part of life,  another opportunity to learn, and perhaps, change, one which has already taught me much about my leg, my health, and my own often flawed judgment.

I can only try to live my life; I no longer try to control it, predict it, or run from it.

If I see it from above, then I am reborn and can see with new eyes. The idea for me is to live a life worthy of my calling. There is so much to see from up there – land and sky, sun, moon and stars, people in all their rich diversity, the past and the present, the very wheel of life. And the truth about myself.

I want to see it all.

(Photo: Windowsill Gallery, kitchen)