I watched a child running through a garden where the grass was wet with rain. He did not fear the darkening sky nor the coming night because he knew his laughter would become the silence of the soil, just as the water returns to the ocean without losing its nature. To separate them is to look at the river and forget it ends in the sea, or to hold a seed and think it is dead while it sleeps beneath the snow waiting for spring.

I ask you to open your heart wide unto the body of life so that you may see the spirit of death not as an end but as a return. Do not tremble like the shepherd before the king, for that trembling is already joy, and you shall wear the mark of honor when you melt into the sun and breathe again in the silence.