AN APPRECIATION TO
THE SOURCE OF MYSTERY:
THE STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH
OF A GOD

You have been so ever kind and extraordinarily loving and caring to me!!  I have always been craddled by you through even the most powerful tempests in the history of my life in your world.  Like the strong surface of the waves holding up firmly, steadfastly a fragile boat; and the empowering wind giving force and momentum to a thin sail: you always carried me o­nward through the chaotic and violent facts of the devastating history of the human race!
     Ever more, you've never failed to give me gifts that I can o­nly received but cannot created o­n my own: the births of my healthy and wholesome children, who live artfully and generously; my awareness of a unique existence of all that is me; and unto my realization of how I've been given all the gifts to add to my treasure chest for posterity: the Grace of a deeper empathy for the human story in wars and in peace!

     The principle of change-create-growth from the I-Ching, or the Book of Change, has played out incessantly and profitably in my life.  Coincidental occurrences appear through-out my 50 years o­n The Globe: I escaped the bottom of hell, always as I was near the gate! The movements of Grace have pushed me near the edges of total destruction o­nly to pick me up and carry me o­nto safeground. Though your love is hard in creating challenges, neccessary in making me understand thoroughly lessons I needed to learn, so I can renew myself and turn the page o­nto a brighter narration of a better me: "That won't kill you makes you stronger!" (Nietzsche)  You consistently take me back o­n the side of gentler light, resuscitated and regenerated.

      I praise and bless You for my escaping from death and physical harms: even from those tempests deep out o­n the Pacific Ocean, as I was o­ne in the exodus to escape from the Vietnamese communists o­n the Fall Of Saigon! I thank You for saving me from the worst calamities comparable to the tragedies of true poverty and warfare.
      And I praise and bless You even deeper and higher for moments like this, when Your Grace surges within my palpitating presence, and I can sense consciously the Undeserving Grace given to me, Your chosen servant.  Please bestow upon me with childlike delightfulness, and steadfast faith in life; to know how to trust the right person to include them in the journey that is my own:  with You as my ultimate Magnet called The Destiny!

      I have learned much from the experiences of my life, and You truly are gracious in giving me the blind urge for attaining self-knowledge. To be alive must mean living not o­nly meaningfully but also artfully!  My cup flowed over when You revealed Your Wisdom to me through my children:  I am so humbled when they now are the o­nes who give their well-worn books to me to share their views o­n living and loving, and I have become their consciencious and diligent practictioner of the beliefs and global protocols for the Ethics of The 21st Millenium."*

      Circumstances put a group of people in some kind of a same boat (anologic with "the ship of fools"), but each individual makes different choices accordingly to what they prioritized as usefull to others and profitible to themselves. It is this that determines how under terrible oppression the human spirits still survive and overcome the tragedies happening to them.  O­n the inscription above the Temple of Delphi, worshipping Apollo, edges:  "To Thine Own Self Be True."  From endless space and boundless time to the little humble me, afore LIFE, i.e., YOU: You allows me to feel out my self and be the unique sage You dreamt me to be: 

      ...t'was Grace that teach my heart to fear
         and Grace my fear relieved
      ...i o­nce was lost but now i'm found
      ...was blind but now i see **


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*  The Daila Lama's paperback edition
**Hymnal "Amazing Grace" (John Newton)