The other day, a Facebook friend used a delightful expression that I am going to borrow (Thank you!)— Today, 4:19 AM, EST, marks fifty trips around the sun for yours truly.

I find that rather astounding. I remember calculating from a young age that I would turn thirty with the change of the century. Fifty, though, I simply never imagined. It isn’t that I didn’t think I’d live that long…not exactly… but more that I simply didn’t imagine myself into the future, beyond the math that brought me to the mysterious culmination of one millennium and embarking upon the next. Yet, here I am, riding the planet around the sun for the 51st time.

This lap begins in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Others have begun in several different places in Ohio, and also in Spain, Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Chile, Italy, and Missouri. The travellers nearest to me have changed depending on the starting point—yet always, always the company has been interesting. And there have been some few people, aside from relatives, with whom I have followed the ellipse for over 5 or 10, or 25 or even 35 years, and nearly 1800 of them that I’ve now been with for 22 of these solar fly-bys. Whether new to the path together or well acquainted with the rhythms of our shared time and travel, I am grateful to and for each friend…each person who has taken the time and interest to say—let’s share these stories of ours, let’s share This One Story, for a while, for longer, for life.

Like any good tale, some of the chapters or portions of time, have been introductions…new people, new adventures, new skills and experiences. Some has been rising action. Things taking shape, new developments or decisions that give direction, moving a life onward. And there have been Events of Significance that have at different moments induced both elation and/or shuddering, fear, excitement, triumph, failure… Over time, there have been resolutions as well…closures of different sorts. Soft landings, hard ones, crashes, burns, and the quiet coming of night.

And so far, the denouement is yet to come. Things have always swung back around with me embraced by gravity and God, the both, ready to begin again. Taking the hand of a new year, ready to flow with the currents of time and circumstance that shape my story and reveal my tale’s reflection as the planet spins on her axis.

This Blue Marble is but one celestial body in one solar system in one galaxy in the universe and I am one life amidst the known and unknown whole of creation that moves along with its trajectory. Tiny, really…more novella than supernova…a brief idea, a speck of matter caught in the light of Love.

Caught in the light of Love….that light which I see sometimes straight on, sometimes burning in a lighthouse to keep me on course, sometimes obscured by the twinkling of other lights or by fog or cosmic dust of one sort or another…and then I hear the sound of space within me, the swirl of Spirit and stardust, atoms, awe, God. I hear it, see it, feel it, sense it, recall it, remember it…am a part of it, of the whole that holds All in relationship to All.

Fifty years into this mysterious adventure, I can’t imagine anything more wondrous than that light. It is at the heart of all that makes this journey bearable, enticing, and highly recommended.