My husband has five dear friends who have been in his life for many years and each of whom he sees on a regular basis. I have about twenty best friends who live around the world, from California to to Nebraska, from New York to Germany to Bali. I may see some of them only once every few years, but when we meet, we are instantly patched into each other without any delay or formalities.  

Thinking of what makes a strong friendship, I've considered my own friends and made a list. Each relationship doesn't necessarily exemplify all these qualities, but all are composed of several traits:

• You find each other fascinating, even though you might not agree with the other's point of view
• You've seen, even foundered in the wake of, each other's less than stellar behavior, and you love her/him anyway
• You are convinced that this person's journey through life has many truly heroic twists and turns that few in their position could have managed so well
• Each of you is willing to take responsibility when you do something that hurts or angers your friend... but not more than your share of it
• You think your friend has some exceptional qualities that amaze you and that you relish learning from, but that you never envy
• You laugh together 

Perhaps the most essential question that a young person asks him- or herself is, "Who am I to be in the world? What will I make of my life?"  

Most young people never have a chance to genuinely explore this question as they rush through high school and college with all their attention, worry, and striving pinned on getting into the next right school so they can get into the right job. How their own particular strengths and weaknesses, their unique and radiant energy, their passion, and their courage fit into the process is considered irrelevant--or never considered at all.

This year, from July 14-24, I will be co-guiding a Youth Vision Quest with Will Scott for the School of Lost Borders, the original organization founded in the 1970s to bring meaningful wilderness rites of passage programs to contemporary people. We will meet for a few days at a campground near Big Pine, CA, then head up to the beautiful desert mountains, the Inyos, where the young questers will do a three day fast and solo. Afterwards, we'll return to the campground for storytelling about the experience, a profoundly meaningful ceremony to which parents are invited.

Last June 19, when Radical Joy for Hard Times sponsored the very first  Global Earth Exchange, people on all seven continents went to a total of sixty-two wounded places to find and make beauty.   

One of those places was the Valmont coal plant in Boulder, CO. The event leader, Christi Strickland, a hospice care worker and teacher at Naropa University, encouraged participants to view the coal plant not just as a filthy behemoth that contributes to global warming, but as part of a whole process, which also includes the hard work of the coal miners and the value of the coal to many people who, through the decades, have enjoyed light and heat in their homes as a result.  

Robin Phillips, a participant at the Valmont Global Earth Exchange, wrote this poem about the experience:

The wound, the healing

the one motion of both:

tandem wheels.

Much money, learning and growing

during the bleed.  Now there is an

Other, an antidote of inclusionary caring

--what was needed then is loved

now, as an Ancestor.

Now I see the coal stacks

     made many easier lives, gave economy

     they continue to contribute.

I see the coal stacks and the bulldozer

     working the black mountain into energy.

I see the coal stacks and the buzzards

     circling, the death birds singing the wound closed.

On a recent trip to New York, where I lived for twenty-five years, I went to one of my favorite places, the Rubin, a small museum in Chelsea that is devoted to both traditional and contemporary art from the Himalayas and nearby regions. This time, looking at an exhibition called Grains of Emptiness, a show by five contemporary artists, I was particularly struck by the work of Atta Kim, a South Korean photographer who invites us to consider the meaning of time and presence in new ways.

Two of his works are large photographs of New Delhi (above) and Times Square, images exposed over a period of several hours. What lingers when the photographs of these two bustling places are printed is surprising: architecture, signs, a statue. All the motorized traffic has turned into a few trails of light. People are ghostly shapes, like dust lingering after a sandstorm. The image is a metaphor for our passage through the world. We are here, we are gone. What we do in the duration is both insignificant... and vitally important.

• Discover how fascination and desire have been your allies all your life
• Recognize the persistent, persuasive voice of the inner lover in you that calls you forth into the beckoning mystery and how to mediate between it and the protective, often self-defeating voice that holds you back
• Take the first steps toward living as the lover of yourself in small ways and large
• Fall in love with your self and your own unique path in life!