Quote of this Blog: "I play Wheelchair Rugby. What's the worst that can happen -- I'll break my neck? Again?" -- Mark Zupan, quadriplegic, rugby athlete.


To fight against the odds. To live in spite of death's taunts. I am blown away by all who can strive to live when peril is all around them.


Knew about a girl in a Michigan high school who had no arms or legs. She wasn't born that way, but when she was an infant and toddler, her parents thought that it was a good idea to throw her out of windows when they were upset. Eventually, she lost the ability to use her arms and legs, and they had to be amputated. If you could have met her, you would not know she suffered such abuse and pain. She gave back peace to the world which gave her pain.


I know of others so consumed by their pain -- or their imagined pain -- that they do nothing but cause disharmony to all those around them. Or they invest in causing additional woes within their own lives. I am so saddened by this inauthenticity. I have friends and loved ones involved deeply in drugs, in alcohol, in depression, in self-hatred, in anger, in the awkward loneliness, in disconnection; they are my friends and loved ones; I do not reject their presence, their lives; I surround myself with all shapes and sizes in hopes that my love will be a link to a higher love, a connection to a life unfulfilled.


The beauty of this life often shrouded in mystery or under some sandy lot or locked away in a remote canyon alludes all of us at times. The mountain blows its message, yet we fail to see the sun's voice, the wind's shadow. We fail to know love, not our creation of love, tattered and bruised with ego and jealousy and possession; love -- one on one, one soul touching another. To risk it all -- broken neck or not; to be fueled by this passion that does not quit because of hurdles, because of brokenness -- that is this life. That is this love.


"What you dream in the mornin', may you dream at night
May your love light be so bright it diminish the darkness
That comes without warning and in no particular way
And threatens to blow you away . . .
I wish I could tell you all the pain's in your head
That it all would be better if you'd just do what they said
But if the voice that is talkin' is never your own
There's no one to tell you that you've finally come home"

-- Ferron, Never your own