PEAK EXPERIENCE: So with this baby coming as our country is at war, as soldiers -- other people's sons -- put themselves in harm's way...I was reminded of something I wrote right after C.J. (my first son) was born, something about how to look at joy and tragedy together. I grabbed it from an online conference where I first scribbled it:

Some of the challenges I've faced in my adult life have taught me to live closer to the midpoint, to dwell within a more measured universe where the highs aren't sheer cliff faces and the lows aren't cesspools underground. I take things in stride, is one way of saying it. Or like that Epstein book, the one about Buddhist psychotherapy, I have a way of GOING ON BEING which works for me, which doesn't inject these artificial seams in between experiences. It's life as one long peak experience, maybe, and this baby against the context of other babies dying, parents in decline, and also other joys, too, equivalent joys, so that this isn't everything, but it IS
exquisite.

May God bless everyone's babies. (And if there is a God he sure doesn't need me to remind him to do so.)