What do you miss?
Is it of the heart?
Is it of the senses?
Is it of the mind?

Did you miss a first step, a laugh, a birth, a death, a first time?
How did you miss it?
Was it due to a distraction? A commitment?, an unavoidable circumstance?

Is our answer an excuse, or is it a fact?
How did we judge our selves? How did others judge us?

In silent reflection, to consider these issues are benchmarks of a Noble journey of the heart.
For those that follow the journey to it's destination I salute you and for those of us who are still on the journey;
Bless you my brothers and sisters.

New Years Day.
Looking West from the Rim of the World High School Parking lot. There, across the street, by the edge of the road. A large group of buckskin boulders impervious to the cold.
The icy gale force wind cutting through clothes with unrelenting ease.
Next to the boulders, looking from the cliff, West, to the beyond, there is an island in the evening distance.
Looking West from this perch of 5000 feet, across a hyperactive San Bernardino, to Bi-polar Los Angles and beyond, to a mother of life, the Pacific ocean.
Twenty-six miles of ocean visible then the Island of Catalina.
Dark in the setting sun.
Looking for over one hundred miles.

In an instant the cold was gone and the enormity of the event prevailed.
Such are the moments in our life.

It is as if we look across a table at someone we have know all our lives and see them for the very first time.

The man's accent was thick and his hands told the story of hard work for more years than I have been alive.
He pointed at a book.
A bright sticker saying it was discounted 20% to 6 bucks was barely covering the original price of 4 bucks.
He pointed to the discrepancy.
"What has happened to this country I love so much?
Lies in stories, lies on TV, lies in the newspaper. Why so many lies?"

He told me the story of his coming to America.
How well he was treated and how he felt he was in heaven. He talked of his first trip to the South, before, when there were two bathrooms for two classes of people and how it shocked him.
His story of immigration was astonishing, heart felt, and dramatic.

He quoted President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex. He quoted Jefferson and Washington. He quoted the Constitution.
He quoted from information I had been exposed to as a child when I didn't know what it meant to be free.

This is a good year to write, Email, call and otherwise exercise our rights as the employer's of politicians, and TELL them what we want...We sign their checks, pay for their limos, their fancy trips. It's time we act like citizens of America and bring ourselves back from Darkness and to being the World leader in Peace and Human Rights.
It's time to be the good guys!