from:   5-13-2008

I don’t much remember growing gray,
It just happened when I wasn’t paying enough attention.
But I don’t much care for graying.
Coloring the gray doesn’t change the aging
But the aging can color the attitude, and the attitude colors the living.

I think that the pinnacle of wisdom is when graying enhances ones attitude
Rather than darkens it.
The truth is that it should be one’s goal to spend as much time graying as possible.
The longer one is graying, the more life one is living.
The more time we spend in graying the more opportunity we are being given
To correct the courses of our journey.

A time to every season should celebrate every day that is spent in graying.
Every day that is spent in graying represents another day that we have been given to experience the adventure that is living.
Life and the living of its moments is the adventure and the purpose of our existence.

Who will cross my path today whom I can help?
Who will appreciate my smile and my laugh?
Who will achieve that goal that has been intertwined with mine within this dynamic called living?
And who will I meet today who will lend me another color to add to the palette of my painting?

Somewhere in the graying reside the building blocks of my life.
Each little stubble of gray houses the colors of my living that has brought me to this place in my life.
Those patches of gray that color my head and face are flashes of the Rainbows of my existence. Rather than being the absence of the color of my youth they are the inevitable trophies of the artistry of GOD.
It is merely my eyes that deceive.
As the graying presents its rainbow of wisdom my mind sees not the colors of a life that has been filled with adventure but rather a struggle that has consumed my resources.
That subtle transformation of graying is only the result of a mixing of the spectrum of colors of a life bred of challenges accepted and of choices born of faith and driven by a force within that refuses to give up.  The graying of my life is not the absence of color but represents a palette of experiences in the spectrum of the universe.

Were one able to view inside the gray, the vividness of the colors there would blind the eyes and stir the soul. Inside the gray are the treasures beyond measure and gifts yet to be opened. It should be my desire that I have twice as many days of gray for the true joy of the graying has been the painting of the picture, and may the picture of my life be far from complete. May the chapters be many and may the miles ahead be as plentiful as the miles of the past.

You should hide your eyes, my friend, for the colors of my gray are bright indeed and the palette of my painting is only beginning to be populated. dw