I have come so that you might have life, life to the full...

A taste of being alive.

Alive. I recognize it when I see it. But the last place I felt it, if only a little bit, was away from civilization... away from all the ghosts that come with being with people... in the Everglades of Florida.

Being alive cannot ultimately be about place. It can't be about having the money to "get away." It can't be something that only privileged or educated people have access to.

It certainly cannot mean being free from stress, difficulty, or hurt, because that is the bulk of what life is for most people on this planet. No, being alive, whatever that means, must exist in the presence of the pain. It has to thrive in the midst of this fallen existence.

I know what it is not. I have lived, and continue to live lacking it. I can paint a detailed portrait of everything that makes me feel like a valley of dry bones, of barely hanging on, struggling to breath. But what it is...

Well, whatever it is, it is so attractive when I see it. I can point to the people who have it, at least sometimes. And though it evades my ability to pin it with words, it teases me with its existence and beauty.

It has something to do with God, and joy, and people. Oh, and love. Love; that which confuses, awes, and humbles me; an adjective used to complete the designation of "I AM"; that which I distort, hope in, and am hurt by.

Those have something to do with being alive, though not in the ways I have thus understood it.

Something needs to change, because all is not right with this world.