I look at the 1981 image of myself, below, and then at the one on this weblog (above right) & 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 we still are & every moment increases rather than decreases our presence in this world.
Is it true that the more present we are the greater our impact on the energy around us? If we have truly shown up to another in their time of need that presence continues.
There is comfort here. As I mourn the vanished days of my children's childhood it is good to imagine that some part of them & me remains in the home where they grew up. As I think of happier times mid-career I like imagining that the air still holds that energy.
The poet Collette Inez evokes the poignancy of our imminent disappearance 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 you do not need to call your name. Your prior presence already declared it.
The window remembers when you looked through his clear eye waiting for your once-small child to come home. Your bed remembers your times of sleep & love & dreams amid her sheets.
Through the quality of our presence we leave a greater legacy than we may imagine.
This world is so hard for so many. Can we 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
Edited from the original published June 11, 2011
Journal of Sacred Work 
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