Introduction
Certain thoughts I have had at various points along my life’s journey I have put into writing. These thoughts, or reflections, are the result of a strong need to clarify for myself some aspect of life that I was feeling or absorbing or being moved by at a particular moment but could not, at the time, find words to express.
The date that accompanies each reflection refers to the experience itself and not to the completion of the writing. These dates permit me to track chronologically some of the development of my inner spaces and so to offer my inner sanctum a deeper understanding of where it comes from and where it is going.
It has occurred to me relatively late in life that these reflections are, in the truest sense, introductions to a soul—to my soul, and to much of that which matters most to me.
Introductions.
Introductions of me to me. Introductions of me to you. And where if not there, I wonder, is God?
The long and labyrinth-like process involved for me in gathering a reflection into words has in several cases taken ten or more years. What exactly serves to bring a reflection to the surface, to the light, to the conscious part of my being is unknown to me. But I have learned that—despite the paradox—the clarity required for self-understanding can have its origins in the vaguest and most mysterious of places: buried deep within various reflections are parts of myself from eons into the future and eons into the past, I am sure.
However long a reflection takes in the coming, its arrival is always a surprise—a part of me I knew nothing of stands quietly before me. And its greeting is always the same: Here I am, I’ve come back.
Then I am whole again.
And that tiny moment of sublime peace is one which no other moment in life can replace.