“Power.”

B.

All this power has to be subject to higher principles. What good does it do anyone if we can do only what we want? What good does it do our own souls if we are left to only our own ideas and devices? We are not at all ready for all that. We can barely wield it responsibly over ourselves.

 

We are in the right school for it though. We can see the lines around the galaxies. We know there is something behind every veil and a person behind every curtain. There is much to consider about the state of the world but much more to consider about the state of every human soul. All the hard power exercised in the world today, moved by sprites and demons or not, is wrought through human hands. The human experience shows us what power without light does. The divine experience calls us to remember to put power in its place: the opportunity to live in the light and not to dwell in the dark of our own solitary desires.

 

“Winning.”

 

F,

And so, what if we win? The other side of the coin is just the other side of the coin. All battles give temporary reprieve. We win by keeping the faith till the end and not by beating the problems in only the present. There is a large swath of forever to come. This is all training for that.

We win by being unchanged by the cries of victory, by being unmoved by the prizes this portends. It is like with anything else, the win is an opportunity to do something. It is not the end of the matter. In many ways, it is only the beginning of things. And this is a good thing. We cannot react to temporary things with permanent smiles or frowns. In winning or losing, we are walking into the things to come. We face both with the same heart. None of it works until all of it works. No one has become whole until all of us are free.

 

“Losing.”

I,

It was an honour to lose with you. I know the noise and the rabble after every contest is always the same. Winning is everything and losing is full of insight and reflection. This is not all true. How and what you win matters. And how you lose matters even more.

 

We did not fall down a flight of stars. We stood on something and for something. In the end, it was not the path everyone took but beyond that, it is not a temporary or permanent state. We are not here for a few battles but for the mighty war of values. We believe in the order and beauty of a seemingly random universe. We believe in the creator and the moment that births and holds everything together. Losing is forgetting that. Losing is when we fail to remember that, as the very wise man said, “…the victory of darkness over light can only be temporary.” 

“Weight.”

  

N,

We argue all the time about the true weight of sin. I know it has no eternal value. You think the sting remains. We both agree there is a sting to it. In the growing up of grace we hurt other people. In living in the darkness of our own pull of gravity, we harm ourselves. It is not a weight we should carry. We ought to put down these foolish and unguarded expectations of our own ability to be good.

Yet, the weight is just a weight. It is something to put down, finally at the feet of the cross. I cannot say how much the light chooses us or how much we choose the light. It must call to everyone one in some way. It must say in clear terms: this weight on your back is not meant for you.

 

“Freedom”

H,

The lights always come on in the end. This is our freedom. Grace means we are not a straight line. We zig zag through life at speed. We are not able to be credible at our own goodness. We are both victim and perpetrator in the crime of being human.

Yet, the light still comes up over our own heads. We can see it calling. We know there is more to the present things we do. We know our fatal flaws will all be replaced. We do not live in fear. We live in the light. We live in freedom.

 

“Final Days.”

  M.

I have no fear of my final days. I know I will spend them thinking of you. I do not think of what is on the other side too much. The human mind is too small to comprehend it. The heart only knows it in rumour. The body cannot enter it. The only real pointer I have for the universe is the heart we share and the life we are building. It is the great shadow that is full of its own points of light.

The final days are not the end. It is just the end of time. We will break free from all of that. We will be as boundless as the universe is. We will not be alone but we will be ourselves, not needing but wanting, not in shadows but full of that real light and no longer merely in love but as love itself.

 

“The Things Unsaid.”

M,

I was always in a hurry to speak my mind. I had to say everything. It had to be clear where I stood on everything. And it was all around me and my words and my heart and my need for sacrifice and some sort of satiation of the strangled soul. Now, I live more for the things unsaid.

There is a peace and joy in knowing you are loved. This is clear when we first encounter God. The thing people outside do not get is the wave of relief at the idea that there is purpose to the madness in general and form in and love for the specific madness that is you. Love is nothing if it is not specific and individual. The thing, mostly unsaid, is that love only works in every single soul. There is no group love. There is only love. 

“That love might stay.”

 

M,

The absolute terror, in my early love of you, of the possibility that it would not stay, that something would taint it, that my flaws would kill it and my hubris would lie alongside my wounded sense of self when the truth comes knocking: the final nail that declares love unworthy or, worse still, me unworthy of love.

None of that came to pass, though. It all went deep into the ground and not out into the atmosphere, useless. It became the thing we are building our life and three other lives around. It did not fail. It has not failed. It has brough back the thirst for honesty, for truth, for the whole self in everything and no part of it left out. Now, it is clear that love will stay. And I intend to stay in it. 

“Love is the ultimate resolution.”

 

M,

It is perhaps too easy to say love resolves all things. There is work to do. Yet, that work is also the work of love. Beyond or beside the greet feeling lies the great forgiveness, the great mercy, the great healing, and the great resolution of all our dark spots. We might summarize what love is but it is the main portion of that eternal book of life.

There is no weakness in love. It is the strongest thing there is. Everything else is a reaction or some distortion of fear and terror. Love stands by itself. It is action, it is words, it is the ideal and the body of the ideal. Nothing will be resolved except love. Nothing will remain apart from love. Our little stabs at it, our little plays based on it, cannot possibly decipher the whole theatre in which it is supreme. It is that singular thing between you and I that will remain enflamed forever, no matter what. 

“Starting Over.”

M,

I have always found it hard to look behind me. The past is not something I wrestle with too much. I am, in a sense, always starting over. This has its good sides, but I also fear I have spots in my memory because I zip pass the crucial replays. I am always trying to be light on my feet. Sometimes, it is better to let the heaviness in.

There is always the weight of history. And these things are to be resolved, not avoided. There is no beginning free of everything that came before. We do not put down an empty load to be relieved of an empty burden. The burden is real. We must resolve it. 

“Life goes easy.”

 

M,

Still, we learn to go easy on each other. It is just life, and we are sharing it. This need to be right ends in the same silly statement from which it began. There are no prizes for being the right one. There are no separate prizes at all. We are learning not to be lonely. We are learning not to be singular, and we are learning to not to lose our minds by ourselves. Even insanity is better shared.

 

The ease that comes is not giving up. It is hanging up those boots we used to call pleasure, but we now know is only escape. It is learning to be quiet because we do not need to fill every moment with noise. It is being at ease with one home, a nation united under the joy of its own weight, not scrambling, or suffering but at peace. It is knowing this house is all we need. And that love stretches, all by itself, into eternal form.

 

 

“Honest Assessments.”

M,

It is no wonder that love is portrayed in such terrible ways. We have not cracked it at all. There are so many rooms in that house. Who can climb all those walls? Who would want to? In the mystery lies the appeal but no mystery can go on forever. After a while, we want an honest assessment of what it all means and where it is all going.

 

In truth, when people say it is easy or it is very hard, I can see both sides. There is an ease to being with your partner that makes constant explanations and justifications obsolete. There is also a hard track of it that is two distinct people forging a life out of thing air. This seeming contradiction is not as strange as it appears at first look. The best partnerships will hit the rocks at many moments in a single day. The changes that happen will be between us and through us to each other. It is death to self but life to everything else. We are made whole by breaking up into parts together. The mystery is solved in this breakdown. There is glory and the light and the pain and the guile and the lesson in love. There is the start of the end of life as a lonely planet. 

“Be Vulnerable.”

 

D,

The older you get, the more your instinct is more the shield than the sword. The sword here is the true state of things, the actual and real word of God, the way you really are in the light. Something happens to tell us we should be weary of true feeling, and our many weakened states or admitting how much we do not know. We become stuck in that place. We become scared of our own shadow and the real image it predicts.

 

You must learn to be vulnerable. You must put that guard down. You must learn to cry without shame, to be nonplussed and not hate yourself, to fall and crack but let the light in and to not listen to that other voice that speaks against your inherent value and divine dignity in the face of present reality. You were always made for more. These lessons will not take you. They are made for you. Be open to them. It doesn’t matter if the world will see all that mess. The most important things are way beyond this present world and all of us presently laboring under its one measly sun. Your true self will overcome the sneer. Let that true self show all the way through.

 

“These planets collide.”

 

Z,

We will run into people all the time. It is important to note that no human is truly harmful or helpful by themselves. They are a complex web of experiences, expectations, disappointments, and the desperation we all share. We have our own webs too. When these planets collide, there is no telling what will emerge from the rubble. You have to learn to look at yourself in that light. We can be damaged, and we can also be the damage.

 

There is nothing to fear in temporary things. All damage is temporary. The human body is no match for the human soul. Jesus said: do not fear the person who can only harm your body. There is something eternal about the human experience. These present stakes are not as high as long and loud sermons tell us. In an eternal sense, they are much higher than all that. From the cheap seats of our present life, the stakes are that we learn from every rumble and the rubble that ensues. We do not learn avoidance but release. We do not learn how to avoid other planets. We learn how to put it all in context. The thing will look better in the full light of day. That day has not yet come. We learn we are on a collision course with something grander. Perhaps, our own true state. 

“The Lonely Planet.”

  

E,

It is important to understand and accept that the lonely planet is you. There is no space for another human being inside your own soul. We are disappointed in people, mostly, for not filling holes in spaces inside us they were not designed to feel. They have their own stuff going on. We can share a journey but not one single, we can share moments but not every bit of time and space, and we can be close but never, ever, the same single being.

 

These spaces are as infinite as the God who intends to fill them. We are all single stars in the firmament of heaven. This hunger we feel from that dark nothing and light everything we come from is insatiable and very real. We must learn to lean into it. It is not to be avoided or pushed away or glossed over or denied. We will learn, through much trouble and debauchery, that it still comes back to that same single place: your own heart, your own soul, your own silence, and your own reach for the divine. Thankfully, the divine has always and already been reaching for you.

 

“In the end.”

 

H,

Who will we be in the end? I do not know. I know the signposts. I have a feel for the ultimate story. I do not know any of the details. What will it be like to forever be? Is the universe inside as vast as the universe around us? What will we do when this other self emerges and we are made of eternal stuff, in reality and not in theory or by choice?

 

I find it endlessly exciting to think of. We are on the surface of a planet, held down by gravity but looking up at the universe every single day of our lives. We are already in the wonder. We just do not understand the infinite yet. In the end, we will.

 

 

“It Pales in Comparison.”

 

H,

We cannot sugar coat it. Life on earth is dreadful for many people. It is more of a terror than a blessing to most people on earth, no matter what the postcards tell us. The material improvements, which are not universal or as widespread as the cliff notes on prosperity and capitalism will have us believe, do not speak to the dearth of the soul and the meaning and purpose we must all find at the other end.

 

We know the human heart is hungry like a hunter. We know that even when that physical hunger is satiated, other and more complex hungers take its place. The greedy human belly pales in comparison to the greedy human heart. The idea that both poor and rich can suffer the same maladies, encounter the same crisis of the soul and end up, even with very diverse problems in colour, at the same ledge, is seen in everyday life. We believe light is the solution. We are asked to feed the hungry, to look for justice in the world, to fight inequality and decay and to not buy the approach that it all means nothing in the end. The darkness now also pales in comparison to the light and joy to come.

 

 

 

 

 

“Strength for Today.”

H,

It is a lifelong pilgrimage to be our true selves, but we only ever need strength for today. We cannot decipher everything we will face and the many places we will fall. It is not within our present stabs at prescience. We are going to have to go in the mud and then go to the living water. We must remove this dictator called consistency. That is for eternal beings. We are not yet that.

 

We cannot stand on the old monikers of decisiveness. We do not know enough. We will not always be right. We will mostly be wrong. We have been wrong a lot. We will be wrong again. This is not the thing we need to fixate on. The only thing we know and can encounter today is linear time. We only know of existence in time. We measure time in seconds, minutes, hours, days. All we need to look at and embrace, in the context of our souls heading into the light, is the magnificent present. All we have is today. We pray for strength for today.

 

 

“The road is dusty and so are we.”

 

H,

We know how deep it gets in the dark and full soul. We have lived on that edge our whole lives.  It is not the easiest path, to find wholeness and holiness in being who you are at any given time. The road is dusty with pitfalls and sand traps, and so are we. There is always that quiet moment in ourselves where we look for a thrill, any thrill at all, that quiets the loud questions within our own souls. We cannot be alone with ourselves for long without folly.

 

I am not sure that feeling will go away any time soon. We will either learn to live with that inner chaos or we will always yield to it and become poorer from it. We know that the things we believe in speak to the healing of our whole lives. We know that these “rules” around the path home are for our benefit and not a counterpoint to our fun. There is a great redefinition going on. The change is what is painful, not the destination.

 

“In Character.”

 

H,

We cannot escape it. In the end it will be more about character than anything else. We will live or die on who we are and not who we say we are. There is a tag that comes along with the very idea of being in character. It is mostly the face we put on the soul. We are constantly told to act right above anything else, to put that foot forward that carries no dust and to be an example to others, who are behind us, on how to move forward.

 

 This is also all, mostly, bunkum. Character is about who you are. It is not about intention or projection or helping this “lesser” humans with our fake wands of salted wisdom. Who we are in the now may not be good or good enough, but we have to own up to that as well. Character begins with honesty. And when we are open to the light, everything can happen.

“Practical Life.”

Z,

Of course, many things we do are just practical. We are constantly “giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s”. We live here now, and we must do some of the work that living here demands. We grow old enough to finish school and then find a trade or a business or a job to provide for ourselves and those under our care. We learn to live better with our bodies, to take the right medicine and to maximize our moments on earth with joy and happiness as well as with sadness and tragedy. We experience everything and for us, some of us on this side of the planet, it comes with the extra heft of history and the less endearing angles of the nation-state premise. I will not keep boring you with that though.

 

The other side of that, hehehe, coin is this: “we give to God what is God’s”. Ourselves. In the real sense of the word, this is home. We came from the creator and will return there. We live our life on earth in expectation that there is more than the practical to look forward to. We expect the sublime, the transcendent, the powerful and the transformative to shape us and all of the reality to come. The practical life is merely a ship taking us to the home where we will forever be.

“The Poor and the poor.”

D,

You always ask me about the reported speech of Christ: “the poor you will have with you always.” You seem to think it is an argument against my more leftist tendencies. You have a couple of Uncles that will agree with you. They see it as a call to the material nature of present earth. The poor will be poor, and the rich will be rich and the Christian, poor is spirit but rich in means, should be generous. Poverty is almost destiny or a mindset or an ability to tithe or a misunderstanding of certain spiritual principles.

 

I see the statement as a challenge. He knew what Judas meant. He knew the concern was not the poor. He is realigning all who would hear not to ignore the problems of the world. No act of worship will stop that duty of care. No disciple with loose pockets takes always from our agenda to look to and for the good of every person we encounter. We are called to the poor in spirit and the poor in pockets too. We are both and are in both. We are called to each other.

 

 

“Into the White.”

E,

There is no timeframe on grace, and we must not be in a hurry to fix eternal things with temporal tools but also, we are on a journey somewhere. There is so much grey in life and most of it is inside us, but we are walking into the white. We know that there is such a thing as truth. We know that shadows end. We know that we must take that journey to our real nature and our true state. The rest is waiting.

 

This is beyond just picking a religion or a faith or a set of beliefs to live by. This is the way we address the infinite. They way we think of all created things. The way we move and are moved in God. It is about the way we actually live, in our hearts and at the seat of our very souls. We will know the mystery when we are done. We will see what lies beyond the Rubicon. Our hearts in white will be ready for it then. Now, we see it in opposition to people and things. We regard it to be right and others wrong. Then, it will not matter. We will be in the thing itself. Everyone will be wrong. We see only the shadows. Then, everyone will be right. There will be no more shadows.

 

“Get up but not so fast.”

E,

There is nothing no real hurry to the truth. I know we are constantly being told by charlatans and preachers about impending kingdoms and divine timelines. If the goal is eternal, then the steps cannot be impacted by temporal time. We are not on a human clock. There is always something much more infinite going on. There is no timeframe for the healing of the fractured human soul. God will get to it in time. Or, better said, in timelessness.

 

You can get up not so fast. You can spend all the time you need inside your own soul. The world may push and press, but it has no alarm for your real life. Modernity and the wheels of ever-present fortune press on us with the idea that we need to spin value as fast as we possibly can. The true state of our universe tells us something different. The press of present life might give the illusion that we must always run at full speed, or we will not make any impact on the things we believe in, but this is not true at all. In fact, speed and anxiety add nothing to the things that really matter. We must learn to slow the pulse down to the rhythm of God. We must learn to wait for the hand to pick us up from that storied ground we lie on. We will get up, for sure, but not so fast.

“Rock Bottom.”

E,

We cannot be afraid of the rock bottom. It is where all miracles begin. The light does not work for those under a lamp. They are not ready for the thing it promises yet. They are content with being a little better and not their best selves. I should stop saying “they”. I mean us. In the little compartments and bit parts that make up our life on earth, we want to slink by in as much comfort and care and consolation as the lamp will offer. Yet, in our hearts the sun is always rising. We always dreaming of that other country.

 

It always comes when we have nothing left in us to fight it. It is the herald within every disappointment: the lost lover, the grief of loss, the opportunity missed or the tragedy in full swing. It is there that our humanity settles on the sparks of light around us. On the floor we might no longer struggle to look at the stars. And when we think of the infinite vastness of the universe itself, in all its glory, we know that the lamp of single room will never be enough.

 

“The calm inside.”

Z,

There are storms all around. There is also the calm inside. Life can fold against you and make the mundane seem sacred and the sacred seem profane. It is loud and brash and unrelenting, at points. Still, you are on solid ground.  You must look at life with those forever eyes. It is not automatic to see it this way, but it is important to look at the full story.

 

The things outside will always seem defining. They are not. Your heart is where the stuff is. It is the stuff that forever is made of. You will always be fine. You will always be found. There is nothing to fear. I do not promise that there will be no fire and brimstone or chaos or disorder on the outside. I know you can always find and live in the calm inside.

“Power to the Person.”

 

D,

The world can make you seem powerless. You are not.  It can reduce you to a number or a measure of value controlled by a market that never ends. You are much more than that. The power is always in the person. You might not be able to control the world, that fading edifice, but you have control over your own soul.

 

This might seem like scant consolation, but it is much more than that. It is the true state of things. The things that are on top of the pile now are as transient as the things that were a thousand years ago. The frame of our reference for all existence tells us we are much more than carbon and though the final sun might die, and the earth might fade before all that, the things inside you are as eternal as your own metaphorical heart. That being is more powerful than anything you can presently see.

 

 

“No Heroes or Mentors Here.”

 

E,

I have often mocked the idea of mentorship. I do not know why. It is not something I have had any real respect for in the real world. A seminal or central figure has never been as vital to the way I think or live as the circle of friends and family that exist in my real life. I have a natural aversion for formal structure in relationships and I suspect, learning from the experiences of anyone, probative as it may be in general, is not as useful as it is made out to be. No hero or mentor can fill the real things before you in your day to day.

 

This does not mean we disparage anyone or their grand advice. It means we remember everyone is painfully human and we learn from each other and not down on each other. There is an equality to the human experience. There are no heroes or mentors here. Just people who will learn, though failing, humility and through that, better versions of being.

"Opening up.”

  

M,

It is hard for me to say how I really feel about anything. I have lived too long in my own head. The things I do to solve my own angst are secretive not out of guilt but out of shame. I am already wired to be ashamed of my own thoughts and my own solutions. My soul seems fractured in a way that I cannot easily explain or reveal. I am only learning, now, not to hate myself.

 

I say often, as a joke or as a prayer, that everything is forgivable between us. I do mean it on my side. It brings no obligation to you. The human soul is deep and deeply troubled. I want to get into all of it. I want to find out all the things closed in my own mind and heart and open those places to the light. I am not just talking about what I do but the why I do these things I am not just talking about flaws and sins but seemingly good acts and reactions. I am opening it all up. I hope you want to share that with me as well.

 

 

 

“Hard things.”

 

H,

We cannot tell how long the transformation of the soul will take. I am beginning to suspect it will take our whole lives. I think the lifelong trajectory is only meant to give us one thing: the solid foundation of our choices. We are not here to learn how to live in the light perfectly but how much we need the light to live at all. We are here for the hard things of being human as our lesson on becoming eternal.

It occurred to me, while talking about this to someone else, that we get caught up in things like “calling” and “purpose” and that we think the fruits and the gifts of the spirit are a support system for the former phrases, the road we walk on to do something great on earth. I believe we have this backwards.  The road we travel, the things we do are just the way we learn to rely on the higher things of the spirit to make meaning out of all life, not just our sojourn on earth. We are not here to do anything but to be who we are. The effect of that on earth is incidental and temporary. The impact of our renewed soul on everything that exists is eternal.

“To the Finish.”

 Z,

I always imagine that death is much like being born. We will be unaware. It will come upon us like a word we hear in an echo, then a final cry and then the end of the things before but not the things ahead of us. I have always had this idea of how I would go. You would find me in bed, sleeping away the afternoon and then just away. Your mother hates it when I say this. This is the best-case scenario. But that is enough of the morbid: how are you?

 

I have always had a dissatisfaction with living on earth. I hope I have not passed this on to you and your siblings. I want to be honest but not burdensome. I have also had furious joy in things, in being in love, in having children, in fighting for the things that I believe in, in having great friends, in tea and in writing as an end in itself. At the finish line, I hope I feel this way. I hope I see your own joy in your eyes. I hope you can share it with me. I have a lot of weight to put down. I have a lot of things that I cannot carry to the finish. Yet, I am not impatient. Step by step, day by day, the faith over the fear, the love over the law of things and the life with you and our family over the transient pleasures of being anywhere else.

 

“Of Heartbreak.”

 D,

I am sure it makes no sense to you, in the moment, to tell you it will all pass. That is clear enough. Depending on where you are in the healing process, every word I say will be counted against what you believe, and I might make you withdraw or come forward more so I can see you in all your heartbreak glory. Still, you know how you feel, and I will not feign to understand the peculiar and particular colour of your loss. It is enough that you are hurt. That I can speak to.

 

I know you are strong, but no one is strong enough to be unaffected by their dreams going off the rails. You put your hope in something and it did not become the fire you imagined. There is no shame in this. There is no guilt to be had. Whatever you think you did, you are human and that means you are not expected to be perfect by anyone but yourself. Go through the process, let the thing hand around you a bit and be moody. Listen to all that sad music and feel sorry for yourself. There is nothing wrong with any of that. Remember that you are loved. You are not a moment. You are a beautiful soul approaching the infinite. I love you and I cannot wait to talk to you again, face to face. These hard things you feel today are strong but temporary. I have tea. Tell me all about it.

“Pace.”

E,

Your enthusiasm for learning has always been your great gift. Yet, a gift is barely half the story. There are things that always rise above the gift. A gift is wasted on a restless soul. Well, perhaps that is harsh. Nothing is truly wasted on anything. It is not ideal to have a gift and nothing else. It simply does not work. You will have to pace yourself. You will have to learn to be patient with your own soul.

 

The gift is a thing you will shape and move and refine and make better as you learn to use it for some higher purpose. A higher purpose is anything bigger than your own advancement. It is in you to share. That giving is the great fruit of the spirit. The idea that character is formed in not just what you give but how you give. Our lives are these transient things that find shape and form in eternal ideals. Giving is the ultimate one. It gives pace to the great need for pointless speed. It is the ground we plant it and the fruit we reap.

“Up Against It, but all for it.”

 M,

We truly are up against it. The love poems and epic plays and declarations of eternal love do not prepare the human heart for the drudgery that is the daily life of love. In many ways, it begins to feel like decay. There is something missing in the great fountain that we expect it to be. We think of it as living and flowing water, but it slowly becomes this still thing. It has nowhere else to go but inside. And this is where the fun begins.

 

For many, the magic at the start is the only thing that matters. A trick is always an exciting thing to see. Yet, the real jewels lie in discovering what makes the trick work. The illusion does not work forever. It will add no wisdom to you. It will not make your mind or your heart richer. It is on the surface and will go no deeper. The beauty is in the pieces to be uncovered, the real human being that lies behind the façade of early love. It is a horror to discover that this person you met at the start will be the person you love in the end. It takes an adjustment. Then you read that sentence again: it is a delight and a joy that the person, not figment or imagination or aspirational agent, you met at the start will love you in the end. This is the final defeat of entropy. Something sure is here to stay. It is not inertia but grounding. It is not stillness but eternity. You are not up against it after all but all for it and this, forever.

 

“Starting Over.”

 

H,

The fear is always that you cannot go at it again. There is this underpinning notion that you only have one shot at everything. The flawed logic of catchy Eminem songs aside, no one takes their first stab at anything worthwhile with much success. Life is much more managing failure than dwelling in success. We are always trying things to learn, through defeat, the most intelligent ways to succeed. This is the human lot; to create in chaos and learn not just the truth of the thing but the lies that push away from what will forever be.

 

There should be no fear of starting over. We are always essentially doing this, in some way or the other. We know the whole story. We are finding ourselves in the details. We are learning who we were always meant to be. There is no home on earth for a true pilgrim. The experiences we go through are just touchstones for the divine nature of everything. The temporal nature of this life we pursue is a pointer to transience and, later, transformation. We are always becoming better than we are today. We do not need a speech or a mentor or a guide to tell us this. Success and failure are not destinations; they are points on the same road. We are on a voyage to become the sort of people and live in the sort of place where all failure is ended and impossible.