The Curious Pilgrims

Reflections from 76 Years of Living

This is me holding a chicken standing near the chicken coop on our farm in Mississippi in 1954

This is me in 2026. I am 76 and I live in Springfield, MO.

When I look back across seventy-six years, the distance from there to here feels both long and surprisingly short. Time has been my teacher—sometimes gentle, sometimes demanding—but always honest. What I have learned did not come all at once. It came through love and loss, belonging and loneliness, faith and doubt, certainty and change. These are the lessons that have endured.

Life Is a Gift

The first and greatest lesson is this: life itself is a gift. It is not owed to us, guaranteed, or fully under our control. Breath, health, opportunity, and even tomorrow arrive not as entitlements but as grace. I have learned this most clearly through suffering—my own and that of others. Nothing strips away illusion faster than loss. Yet even in pain, life remains sacred. Every day given is an invitation: to notice, to love, to grow, to forgive.

Life Is Relational

I once thought life was something I built on my own. Age has taught me otherwise. Life is relational at its core. None of us exists independently. We are shaped by parents and teachers, friends and strangers, communities and cultures. Even conflict forms us.

We depend on farmers we will never meet, workers whose names we do not know, systems we did not create, and generations that came before us. Meaning is never solitary. Joy deepens when shared; sorrow becomes bearable when witnessed. We are not islands—we are threads in a living fabric.

There Is a God Greater Than Us

Another truth has grown clearer with time: there is a God greater than us. Not a god confined to my opinions or traditions, but a mystery larger than human language. I have learned humility here. God is not something I manage or fully understand. God is encountered—in awe, in conscience, in beauty, in compassion, and sometimes in silence.

Faith, for me, is no longer about certainty. It is about trust. It is about standing before something vast and holy and knowing I am both small and deeply valued.

Four Foundational Relationships

Over the years, life has revealed four essential relationships that shape every human being:

1. Our relationship with God – the source of meaning, transcendence, and hope beyond ourselves.
2. Our relationship with others – where love is practiced, justice is tested, and grace becomes real.
3. Our relationship with ourselves – learning honesty, acceptance, and compassion toward our own story.
4. Our relationship with the universe – the earth, nature, time, and the wider mystery we inhabit.

When one of these relationships is neglected, life becomes distorted. When they are tended, even imperfectly, life finds balance and depth.

Truth Is Not Owned by One Religion

One of the most freeing lessons I have learned is this: truth is larger than any single religion. I have come to believe that wisdom appears wherever people seek meaning, justice, love, and transcendence. No tradition has a monopoly on truth. Each carries insight shaped by history, culture, and experience.

To learn from many religions is not to abandon one’s faith—it is to deepen humility and expand understanding. Truth does not fear dialogue. God is not threatened by curiosity. Listening across traditions has taught me reverence, patience, and compassion.

From There to Here

From youth to age, certainty to reflection, independence to interdependence, I have learned that the goal of life is not perfection but faithfulness—to love where we can, to listen when we do not understand, to remain open when it would be easier to close ourselves off.

If there is one thread that runs through all these lessons, it is this: we are here to love and be transformed by love—love of God, love of others, love of self, and love of the world that holds us.

From there to here, that is the journey I am still walking.