The Glistening

Another birthday has come and a distant voice resounds…

“Age is only a number.” “You’re only as old as you feel.” “Consider the alternative!” OM.

These are the pearls of wisdom and chants passed down throughout the ages to all who are aging and we are all aging. Humans are the parchment on which time writes its story. Every experience is etched into flesh and none escape the unique beauty found in each new line or the glory seen in each silver follicle.

There is a woman in the mirror, a reflection which is never the same from day to day, as it morphs and changes like a living lava lamp. I find it fascinating that both babies and those over sixty change in looks so rapidly, one growing up and the other going up the ladder toward heaven.

I behold every choice I’ve made, woven into the once young shell of what society would now label an old crone or sage. But crones and sages have wisdom cut into their pores and deeper cuts into their hearts, where the dried blood of past trials has formed a shield of strength and armor made of love, impervious to the opinions of others. I see the glistening, still as bright as the light of youth in my eyes and recognize their glow is a miracle, given all the trials and woes of the world these eyes have beheld and all this heart has encumbered.

Wisdom oozes from wounds of glory and pours like rain covering the fertile terrain of a life well lived and travels which have taken me into cultures I would be a lost soul without having experienced. The…