Well, it's birthday time again, and so I, as I always do, take time to ponder my life, the flow of my existence on this planet.  The older I get, the more there is to ponder, not because those who are younger have less to think about, but that I have more years over which to ruminate.
      In so many ways, my life--and, really, yours as well--has been a poem, a narrative, a story, an unfolding of time, space, and memory, a journey of adventure and intrigue, of love and love and more love, a voyage of wonder, challenge, heartache, astonishment, and profundity, a marvelous and mind boggling sojourn through existence, a life lived, in the fullest sense, in the compass of eternity and the fact of God.  We're on wonderful treks!
     Yet when I think about my earliest years, years when I wondered why I was here, why I was doing what I was doing, why I was being told to believe the things I was told to believe, and how in subsequent years I looked beyond these things, sought other visions, other perspectives, other ways of looking at this befuddling existence in which I found myself and, along the way, came to grasp what was for me, a seminal vision of guidance and truth, a life, mine (and, really, yours, too), I also see existence, all of it, as a prayer to the encompassing presence of God.
     And yes, life is a promise, a river of promise, really, an unfailing expectation of more, the steady anticipation of a next, a constant inkling and glimmer of what could be, a promise that, like a stream in desert spring, inundates me and you with hope, determination, joy, and the fact of beyond, the assurance of meaning, the fact of beginning and end, endlessly.
     So it is for all of us, our lives a poem that we write, our prayers a life that we make, our promises the hope that drives and molds us, our days lived out in the infinite actuality of a loving God.
     Enjoy your years!