Light
It is easy to slip into self-preservation as the dominant mode of consciousness, especially as one 
grows older in America. The pursuit of security, comfort, health, wealth, and a certain kind of pleasure-seeking dominate the cultural atmosphere. It is difficult to ignore and I have often been caught by it recently, sinking into a state of anxiety and self-recrimination for reaching “this age” without the markers of success and security firmly established. Thankfully, counter to this cultural angst, I a being greatly nurtured by an emerging sense in my life, and in the life of Nancy and I together, of a mission – a mission symbolized by the theme I wrote of a few days ago: Don’t Let the Light Go Out!
On further reflection I realize that it is not really my job to keep the “Light” alive. The Light which emerges from the Tao and illumines the Cosmos is eternal and beyond any danger. However the smaller, “light,” of human reason, kindness, and compassion may flicker out unless humanity finds a way to let itself be a medium of that greater Light. So when Nancy and I dedicate ourselves to, “don’t let the light go out,” we are saying that our remaining years will be spent doing our tiny part of being “alight” – a medium of the flame of the greater Light. In our case that will be the work of keeping tangible well-crafted books in existence because we believe that the feel and texture of a book in one’s hands is an essential element in the overall communication of the beauty and spirit of the words within. I will continue to write. Nancy will continue to hand-bind and craft beautiful books and personal journals for other writers. Together we will burn until our particular candles are used up.
I realize that I am not the light. I am a candle (to continue with an overworked and over-lyricized metaphor). I simply want my life and work to provide a medium in which the light of reason, compassion, and mystery can burn for as long as I live. Death, then, holds no worries. The rampage of unreason and hatred might sweep over me and snuff out my life, but can never extinguish the Light of the Tao. It will go on shining throughout the Cosmos in its eternal dance. But while I am alive, this Light can be seen through the form of “me” as long as I allow my fears to recede and my actions to emerge from a sense of mission. (for an example of our beginning attempts to articulate this mission, see the new website of NW Bookbinding: nwbookbinding – mission statement.)
It has been a freeing experience to watch the internal messages of a lifetime emerge with a force that threatens to overwhelm me with their judgment; then to watch them fade away in the light of my deeper, truer, nature as it actually shines brighter in its later years. Don’t let the light go out of your life, my friends. Let each passing year, each step toward what our fears call “old age and death,” find it getting brighter and brighter.
