BEAUTY can be found in birth and also in dying. If we know how to live, we will also know how to die. Living in beauty means dying in beauty. The deepest way to be alive and the deepest way to die are the same -- doing so in harmony with everyone and everything, in the true spirit of interbeing. The moment we do this, ideas of self and nonself, life and death, vanish, and we experience joy, equanimity and non-fear.
In the center of the city, I am that child that screams in the tenement, the infant that cries in the night holding out its arms to be comforted. I am the young man and woman searching for their way. I am the weary, the wounded, the cold and hungry asking, "why?" ... the old and all who know pain and are acquainted with grief. The loved, the unloved, the abandoned, the lonely and the homeless ... I am all who thirst for the Way. I am child of God, of the Mysterious One, the Immutable, and a child of timeless time. I have no color and speak no language ... and yet, pushed down, way down to the bottom of the Cave to touch the Divine Flame, I become part of everyone and everyone is part of me. The way below and the way above is lit with the golden match of love. Thanks be to the name that cannot be named.