For Cora

Dearest Cora,

See, if you were to show up at my campfire one night I would comfort you with a love story. It would be the story of your entire life from beginning to end. It is called creation.

You are the greatest love story ever told because you could not exist without the whole of creation existing, and creation could not exist without you being in it. I would tell you that what makes you so sad and so lonely is your relentless search after something with meaning…something spiritual to hold on to so as to make your life stable and secure and full of order and harmony. And that is so terribly sad because what you are trying to do is simply not possible. Can a river hold onto itself? Can a stream stop its waters from flowing? In their seeming chaos the eddies and currents of a river form patterns of harmony and order and exquisite beauty far greater than any that could be created by the river itself where it foolish enough to try and separate itself from the flowing water that it is.

I would tell you that your life needs no justification…that that question simply does not apply because you yourself are ever changing life and in so being create more meaning and beauty and magic and love than ever you could if you were but a tiny pebble within that mighty river that you are. And I would let you know that the grace and the power of your life has nothing to do with your dreams or your goals or your aspirations; your successes and dramas and failures but, rather, has everything to do with how you relate to the life that you are and do not yet recognize as yourself.

I would tell you that life creates ever greater beauty and ever greater complexity and ever greater perfection and ever greater harmony because, just as it is, it cannot do otherwise, simply because the life that is, is love. And I would have you understand that your coming to my fire to sit for a while has greater meaning than anything that I could ever tell you because our relating…our very coming together to share together; to laugh and to weep and to wonder is the love that is made perfect as life in relation to itself. And I tell you this, pilgrim…but I tell this to you as well…you, my Cora, my love, because no matter what happens to you in this life it pales to utter insignificance in comparison to how you do or do not relate and respond to the greater totality of All That Is.