After the Royal Wedding, a priest does flips

A portrait of a young man as an artist...

I am so bloody lucky...I have the absolute pleasure of watching a young man express himself through his artwork and life, at the tender of 20. Jason (in the second photo below) has really come into his own: winning a scholarship to attend college, working as a gallery assistant to help support himself, setting healthy boundaries with the sometimes encroaching adults in his life, and enjoying the complexity and beauty of being 20 years old.

I can't take credit for much of his motivation and success, for that is something he found inside. But all these years of hanging out together, I did model for him a few things: curiosity about world, kindness and honesty, and showing up with all of life including the good, the bad and the ugly.

I cherish him and this moment.

The final chapter of "Born to Run"

Once in a great while, a book totally knocks off my socks and this book, "Born to Run", is one of those. It is the non-fictional story of how a remote tribe of native Mexican Indians, who are fantastic runners, competed against the best ultra-marathoners in the world in one exciting race, and what these vastly different groups had in common and learned from each other. Somewhat surprisingly, enjoying whatever you are doing (in this case, running) and being loving to others turned out to be two critical factors in running well. Sometimes overlooked in this age of science, these qualities of heart can not be underestimated. As someone who ran competitively for over 20 years, I don't want this book to end.