I look at the 1981 image of myself, below, and then at the one on this weblog (above right) and wonder. What happened to that thirty-seven year old man?
Have we left our spiritual footprints in every place we have ever been? If so, everywhere we were, some essence of us remains.
A friend asked me if I thought that the more present we are, the greater the impact we make on the energy around us. If we have truly been present to another in their time of need, that presence of ours continues far beyond the passing of that moment.
This kind of thinking can bring comfort. As I mourn the vanished days of my children's childhood, it is good to imagine that some part of them, and me, remains in the home where they grew up. As I think of happier times in mid-career, I like knowing that, perhaps, the the air holds some kind of good energy my presence may have contributed.
The poet Collette Inez evokes the poignancy of our imminent disappearence from the world: "Before you read the farthest wave,/ before our shadows disappear/ in a starry blur, call out your name/ to say where we are."
But, perhaps we truly are everyplace we have ever been.
Does the window remember when you looked through his clear eye waiting for your once-small child to come home? Does the steering wheel remember the way your hands wrapped themselves around it on the way to work and how tired those same hands were on the way home? Does your bed remember your times of sleep and love and dreams amid her sheets?
These notions may sound strange and even foolish. Yet, I believe we, through the quality of our presence, leave a greater legacy than we may imagine.
God's Love holds for us the memory of every time and place we have been present.
This world is so hard for so many. Can we find a way to honor our life here in the way that Adam Zagajewski once urged: "…Praise the mutilated world/ and the gray feather a thrush lost,/ and the gentle light that strays and vanishes/ and returns.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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