The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize.
                                  -Chinese fortune cookie

beyond beyond

the search is about love

the looking about, the catching

at a glance, the chance

the sought, the never caught

the up and down the web-ways

the in and out of site after site

with bodies, the same bodies

on a different face, without breath

flat, unfelt, hoping

to touch some spot

to see, to find a piece

of my self, missing, long gone

long departed, long never there.

tis a strange journey through

 the surf-tide, through the

valleys of despair, the mounts 

the expectant, the plateaus

the plateaus, always the plateaus

the salt flats of the desert, my

desert, the flatland of my wants

my wish to find someday

the ever absent something

called love.

yet I continue on

let go, release the want

the beast, the albatross

swinging 'round my neck

to let it fly, let it flee

find new shores o'er which to sail

new waters to fish, new lands

to rest its wings, build a nest

lay down and die because here

I cannot rest free to be, to discover self

but somewhere beyond, beyond.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -When Christian liberty becomes the heart of people's existence, they lift up their heads and raise their voices.  Like animals who panic and turn tail, who can smell danger faster than the wind can carry it to them, the scribes and pharisees showed an obstinate and endless patience as they strove to immunize and neutralize society against the threat of liberty.  For joy, which is born of freedom and only from freedom, is a deadly peril.  It shakes walls, enlarges the soul, strips off old skins, and tells the stranger, the black, the Chinese, "You are my brother, my sister."  To the atheists it says, "We share the same unbelief"; to the prostitute, "You are no worst than many others; in fact, you're more honest." With its sense of humor, joy sees Christian liberty as rooted in faith; in its winnowing-basket it sorts out what is alive and what is only of archaeological interest.  Leaving the past behind, joy strains toward the future, treating what was been already been achieved as of little value.

  -A person is alive only to the extent that she achieves spiritual freedom, radiating the spirit of alleluia, no longer responding to external commands, having become one with God - who never gives an order because God is love. Civilization, culture, the Vatican, the pope, and the church exist only in order to permit each of us to become alive and free.