The summer after my first year of college, I headed to Walla Walla, Washington to work in the Green Giant pea factory. Initially, I worked in the factory at various jobs but quickly moved to a truck-driving job for a harvesting crew that doubled my pay. My team drove large dump trucks that followed the pea combines through the fields on the mountainsides, and once filled with pea vines we’d drive down to the pod-strippers. It was a 24-7 operation and I drove the 6am-6pm shift. One morning at dusk as I drove down a twisting old gravel road I rounded a corner to find a pickup truck heading up the mountain, on my side of the road. I steered the truck out of his way climbing the inside of the mountain so he could pass safely, but as the truck came back down, I knew I was going to roll, so I ducked under the steering column. After the roll, the truck headed to the far side and would have crashed off the mountain, but a large tree stump caught my right front tire stopping the truck. When the foreman came with the tow truck and saw what had happened he asked me, “Why are you still alive”?
I survived my Airborne Ranger days in the Army to break my back in a car accident where the Pinto I was driving should have blown up. Last night as I drove to my son’s for supper I saw a friend getting into his car at my old church, so I stopped to talk. We laughed as we shared old stories and he leaned closer as I updated him on my cancer. We hugged, and as I started to walk away, he grabbed my arm and said, “You’re at peace”. I smiled for I realized for me, life has never been about the why, but about living the mystery and believing in my life flame. Live the mystery today and feel the glow of your life flame.
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