Dear Pneuma,

Just answered the door to a young man trying to sell me magazines so he can go to St. Thomas. Had to tell him I knew the gig, that I understood he was involved in a scam. Kind of ironic, as I intended to write to you about how life is perfect just the way it is. I was going to show how heaven can have nothing that competes with having a self and life.

Now I have to ask myself, if the world were exactly as it is, minus the magazine scammers, would that be better than the world as it is, with magazine scammers. All things considered, probably not. After all, people being people is how a magazine scam is born; people reaching for something beyond themselves; people believing they have a powerful idea; people expressing the hurt and desperation of death by hurting and despairing others. People hoping, trusting and opening their doors.

So much that causes pain comes from the world being made as it is made-diverse life forms and matter configurations bumping up against one another, relying on one another. Some are takers. Some are givers. Some share. Some shade. Some stand. Some climb. Some fight. Some run. Yet none is without touching another. Sometimes those places where my life touches another's existence can't help but cause pain. After all, who's to say that a virus changing my body is an evil thing, when the virus has an existence that requires it to change bodies.

And, unlike that virus, I am able to know myself separate from this great reality. I can stand, climb, fight, run, look, sleep, care, share, take, and give beyond any simple limbic response or spiritual predestination. I am alive, left free in a universe of dangerous and marvelous things to prosper and to fail, to love and to hurt, to fear and face. I am alive, left free to choose what to believe and how to be. I actually, simply cannot imagine a heaven that can offer me more. I really do not want a safe universe that gives me whatever I will and never requires anything in return.

If that means I have to turn away a few magazine scammers, then so be it.

I give thanks to God for the life I've been given,

Cobalt Dreams