I am sitting at my little wooden desk in my bedroom, listening to the birds sing, surrounded by graces: animal voices, sunlight, colors, scents; the refreshment of clean skin and teeth and hair, of comfortable garments and a tidy room. My appetite is taking a satisfied nap after a breakfast of yogurt and peaches, washed down with a mug of rich black coffee.

It is delicious, at moments like these, to inhabit a body: head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes ears, mouth, and nose. My lungs inflate with healthy air: steamy, fragranced with ginseng from the shampoo and conditioner I lathered into my hair during my morning shower. My heart's steady beat fills my veins and arteries with coursing life, rich streams that water the fertile acreage of my brain. Nerves run their twinkling races. DNA strands fulfill their wyrd.

I know that my body will not always give me cause for such celebration. This lesson has been reinforced in the past months as I watched a friend's body confront the mortality that it had housed for over fifty years. It is a guest that dwells within everyone.

I wonder if the angels see it, that death that we carry, when they look upon us. If so, I wonder what they see when they look at me.

The idea that one day my breath will fail is as imponderable to me as it was propesterous to Macbeth that Birnam Wood could one day march on Dunsinane. But my Birnam Wood will march, nonetheless, as my friend's did, and the battle will take place, and my body will fall.

Sitting here at my desk, my happy heart keeping my spirit company, I am grateful for three things.

I am grateful that I know that I will meet my death one day.

I am grateful I do not know when that day will be, or what that death will look like. It is enough simply to know that we will meet.

Most of all, I am grateful that I must only meet him once. This knowledge gives me courage. It consoles me when I think about my friend, whose great ordeal is over, who has gone through the last riddle, and who will live the rest of her days in that species that stands beyond, beckoning and baffling, a species that is as invisible to me as music, but positive, as sound.

"I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him, with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)