“. . . and so . . . it is time for me to shed the guilt and shame of my youth, shed the expectations of my fathers and mothers, and embrace who I truly am.”

There are many ‘aha’ moments in life, some arriving with stunning quickness, like a sudden, thunder-clapping lightning strike amidst a mid-afternoon downpour on a long walk.  An electric event that purges your entire body of earthly grit, refreshing it with a scintillating, surreal pulse of life and breath . . . as if the skies beckoned the earth to shake . . . waking you from some unperceived stupor, and life – your life, is forever changed.

Others come slowly . . . painfully . . . excruciatingly . . . frustratingly . . . slowly . . . as the germination of some long-forgotten wild-flower seed that shows no proof of its existence or growth underground . . . ne’re permeating the thin membrane of topsoil in a garden of seemingly well tilled earth.  Until . . . finally . . . it opens . . . with slow, deliberate motive and eventually, grows fruit in an abundance heretofore unexpected, undreamt of, most certainly producing an aromatic beauty with essence unknown previously to the world of humanity.

An ‘Aha’ thrells with inertia . . .

This is a website about what has become known to me as: ‘the Work.’  We’ve all been involved in the Work to one extent or another.  Some as observers; some as fellow sojourners alongside friends, relatives or strangers; some as full-blown participants – either willingly or unwillingly – in the Work.

The ‘Work’ is part of a larger metaphor . . . that of the Sacred Journey.  Humanity and the shared experience of its characteristics are a source of constant reflection, struggle, and exploration for our species.  Questions about Ultimate Concerns and Ultimate Reality abound in our physicality, our relationships, our logic, and our emotions.  When we, as individual humans, experience a tragedy or crisis that strikes to the core of who we are, we can be faced with an emptiness of such enormity, that we experience a shredding of threads that bind us to meaningful existence, and we face the peril of plunging into a figurative or literal abyss.  Life ceases to employ color, and all is wept to black . . . a Jonah sized fish . . . a box from which escape is neither probable nor imminent.

In such cases . . . it seems our very soul questions, “What is the way forward?”

The ‘Work’ is also the story of my personal journey into, through, out of, and sometimes, back into – the darkness.  In my story, I discovered that the metaphor of the Sacred Journey, and The Work are, indeed, the same thing.  My journey is not, nor will ever be complete.  For those of you that have been in, or near the darkness . . . you know of what I speak.  For those who have not . . . in one way or another . . . your path may one day encounter the prison of darkness.  And, in whatever way this website may provide help on your journey, may you find your peace.