Ok, let’s get one thing straight:

I’m not from outer space. (Though I believe my friends may have their doubts about that.)

I took first breath in “The Windy City” in the year of the rooster, the year of Sputnik, the year the Walrus met Paul.  My mother was under hypnosis when I was born and I guess life has always felt a bit surreal to me somehow as a result, nothing being quite what it seems.

So when I ponder ‘origins’ I know there’s more there than meets the eye. For me “origins” is as much about who we’re becoming as it is about who we’ve been.

I’ve been trying to remember when I first began looking up.  I do recall that as a kid I thought my real home was on Krypton.  After all I had the Superman outfit to prove it and could leap down a dozen stairsteps in a single bound!

I have only vague memories of John Glenn’s orbital flight in ‘62. I was almost 5.  I do vividly recall, however, watching the ghostly figure of Neil Armstrong take that giant baby step on a dusty old world a quarter of a million miles away.  I’ve looked up a lot since then.

Recently I’d rediscovered the childhood art of “cloudshaping”.  I find myself occasionally gazing out a commuter train window to catch a gazelle, rabbit, or even some musical instrument pacing slowly across the blue - revealing themselves in a clump of cloud!

At night, when the skys’ veil is ^{l i f t e d} and this endless cathedral of lights is revealed, that is when I feel ‘the presence’ most profoundly.  Those twinkling lights just seem awfully familiar to me - like beacons....

This is the magic of life revealed.  The hidden mystery in a moment of dreams, where experience and perspective colour our common lives.

We are actors on a stage and the audience in appreciation. Life in activity from a front row seat.

And, good or bad, our lives unfold exactly as they were meant to.  Every change in life, every threshold crossed, every setback endured, pulls us along like gravity.  A river of molecules on a backdrop of drama.

Swim well !