"The mountains are calling, and I must go." - John Muir

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

11 March

We drift about encased in a tiny bubble of time-space, floating freely in a sea of eternity, like a fetus in a womb, sustained utterly by a loving God. Passing out of the bubble is what we call death, a second birth into that other, and ultimate, mode of existence. We fear this passage, I think, because we fancy, first, that the journey is solitary and second, that the destination is unknown. But neither is true. The journey isn't solitary because God's sustaining us, unobtrusive though it may be, is utterly pervasive to the point of being inescapable, even in Death. The destination isn't unknown either – as Alpha and Omega, the end, death, is one with the origin. In addition, as we transfer timeless, spaceless concepts like love, beauty, justice, abundance, balance, imagination, playfulness, intelligence, purpose into a viable, interwoven part of our pre-Death life, then we've already experienced that world outside this provincial bubble. So like every other fear, the fear of Death is groundless. The only sting Death possesses is the sting that we, as the sovereigns we are, confer upon it, for Death is swallowed up in Victory. There is no tear that won't be dried - even unshed tears - for those who will but relax and let it be.