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I woke so early, 2:30 am, unable to sleep, rising in the cool quiet stillness, in the darkness.  With questions.  Always with questions.  Sometimes it seems I am made of questions.

I was feeling as though I started out at the beginning of my life to end up in what seemed to be the closed end of a maze.  Being able to see behind me that pathway of my life journey.  Seeing how I got to this stuck, lost deadend place.  Not knowing how to get out.

Thinking about the billions of us here.  Those who know nothing but struggle, deprivation and suffering.  Those whose lives seem to be on track.  The ones with confidence, competence, resources available to create a life that suits them.  A life not plagued by lack or by questions.

Sometimes feeling as though the only given at all is the passing of time.  What is the great equalizer among us?  Generation after generation, is receiving a portion — of something — with which we make a life?

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When I was up at our local humble laundromat cafe yesterday I reached for a newspaper lying on a table and read an article.  I don’t follow the news.  Oh, my heavens NO!  I would be overturned myself if I knew even a glimmer of what is going on in this world of ours!

But that article.  North Korea.  Thinking of lopping off a nuclear missile at the U.S. of A.?  And “we.”  Not concerned in our confidence that we could “probably” knock the thing out of the air.

To fall where?

Besides, the article reported, N. Korea is probably not serious.  They need other nations.

So.  There.  We have it.

Well, being born in 1951 I remember the cold war plaguing the adults around me.  I remember bomb shelters.  I remember being instructed by our teachers at school about how we were supposed to drop to the floor to hide under our desk if a nuclear bomb was on its way.  I remember standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes when I was 9 years old, staring out at the snowy Alaskan woods outside the window, looking for Russian soldiers with their guns creeping toward our back door.  I was terrified.

No more?

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What world is this?  Each born at a spot on earth where so many forces shape what is possible in people’s lives.  Billions without sustenance.  Billions in struggle.  Do others wake before dawn wondering what place they have in the changing patterns of human life on this planet?  Asking, “What, oh what, do I have to offer?”

I woke early enough that all life outside my home with the exception of a mournful owl seemed to have stopped its pace — waiting.  Waiting for another cycle of dawn to appear.  I reached for a pen and one of my many spiral notebooks to write my 87-year-old friend who has done much.  Seen much.  Knows much.  And still wakes asking questions about quantum physics even as her back aches and sends her back to bed.

I wrote about this maze of life, about how I was sent out on a trajectory at my birth that seems to have sent me directly here.  How small my life is.  How humble.  At times how frightening as life to me seems to be full of nothing but surprises waiting to happen.

And then, most blessedly, I went to my email and found this comment to my last post – +SORTING THINGS OUT

I’m a new subscriber and I’d just like to say, thank you. Thank you very much for being so brave, trying to sort this out and first of all make the most you can with what you have and also thank you for writing about it. Thank you for being honest about it. It is very hard. From what I’ve read so far, I can say, your honesty and diligence to find the truth is almost unprecedented. I value you. I value what you are doing. Thank you, again and again.

I felt the touch of an angel.

I am not alone.

I am grateful.  I have had hope returned to me.  The deadend dark wall of the maze corner I felt stuck in has vanished.  “I can’t do” has transformed yet again into “I can do.”

Thank you, T.

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The time of life also has its timing.  Timing, when it happens, is perfect.  The timing of the arrival of T’s words was perfect.  When I cannot see forward in the darkness I can wait in trust that a ray of light WILL appear!  Of course, being me, made of questions, I ask next, “Is this true for every one of us?”

Can I simply let my questions be?  Can I be defined in part by questions I feel answers for versus questions I do not?  Can I be more than content, even happy for the fact that as quantum physics seems to say, within the within there really is nothing but a great GREAT Mystery?  That being human is itself defined by what we can never know?

I live while I ponder and I ponder while I live.  I can do other things at the same time.  Get something to eat.  I am hungry.  Wash my dishes.  Wait for the creeping grey light of dawn.  Write a post.  Greet readers.  And thank you all for stopping by this point at this point in time.  Good morning!

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