Each moment of our living brings us closer to our dying.

Young or old, the knowledge of life’s end is with us, growing more real, more familiar through the experiences of time and of loss.

Yet what is to keep us from frittering away what time is left to us,
Making it almost a matter of indifference that we have passed this way?

How are we to grasp the urgency of life, to know and seize the moment that will lift us out of mere survival into that realm where someone after us will say “she truly lived.”

Or is true living a day-by-day thing, the accumulation of many tiny acts that all-together say “he lived”?

Either path will do.

Sudden, or almost imperceptible,

They will lead us beyond self-preoccupation and protection to the safe ground of understanding and acceptance.

We will come to know within ourselves the satisfaction and peace of having lived with consciousness and purpose.

We will know the joy of having given ourselves to life. Amen.