Hiatus.

"Can you imagine what it is to cross an ocean? For weeks you see nothing but the horizon. Perfect and empty. You live in the grip of fear. Fear of storms. Fear of sickness on board. Fear of the immensity.

So you must drive that fear deep into your belly. Study your charts. Watch your compass. Pray for a fair wind. And hope. Pure, naked, fragile hope.

At first it's no more than a haze on the horizon. So you watch. You watch. And it's a smudge. A shadow on the far water. For a day. For another day. The stain slowly spreads along the horizon, taking form...until on the third day you let yourself believe. You dare to whisper the word "land." Land. Life. Resurrection. A true adventure, coming out of the vast unknown, out of the immensity, into new life. That, your Majesty, is the new world."

Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) from the movie "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
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I'm signing off for just a month. In my own way, I dare to whisper the word. Know that while we sleep, everything has changed.

Ever-changing.

I am not who I was, even a few months ago. There's great relief in that. One of my fears is that I'll stop growing and just talk about growth. In my age, I'll be quicker to speak than listen...dispensing the same crap to everyone that will sit while I hold court. The edges of my life will get dull and cool. I don't want to get stuck and I don't want the fire of life to die down now, after going through so much. I don't want to be the same.

I don't know if there will be any fundamental change to my personality...and maybe that's not a problem. I'm discovering parts of myself that have always been alive, always been inside me, but quite asleep. I've been challenged by a few close friends to work that out in some new risks. Some new art. I've seen it already drawn out of me by others. Love and trust will do that.

Maybe rather than fundamental change, we can find that identity will be brought to a greater fullness. Again and again, in light of the life's seasons, new risks, and hopes that move from cloudy apparition to flesh, I will continue to become that new creation I long to be - for life and love's sake.

May God grant grant us eyes to see the becoming.