Wellness unto Life We are unapologetically making a play on the Dane'sreflection on Sickness unto Death, aphrase that has since been used to characterized the conscious human condition. Soren Kierkegaard identifies sickness as"despair", defines its three forms as not being conscious of having a self, not willing to beoneself, but also despair at willing to be oneself. He connects the word "spirit" andties it to the notion of "God": A man’s life is wasted when helives on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows, that he neverbecomes decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, that is, he neveris aware in the deepest sense that there is a God. I waswith him on the first half, the reality of despair, but was left behind when hemoved "self" as spirit towards God. Modern theologians talks of despair and its identification with humandepravity, but nebulous when delving in "the other world in the midst ofthis world", a metaphor born in our age but easily subverted to a returnto the medieval G-o-d up in the sky, or lurking behind every apparition ofexistence, embodied in Jesus as the Christ, leaving it as convenientexplanation of everything deus ex machina. MysticTeresa de Avila wrote: Christ has no body butyours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are his body. WhileG-O-D disappears and the upward longing avoided, Christ remains a mysticalredeemer and savior where the Jesus "self" is subsumed under the aegisof idolatry cum exalted role popular in mainstream Christian circles. The Carmelite'scovenant of marriage to Jesus as the Christ, and the Jesuits to Mary, mother ofGod, spawns psychological perversions! RodneyRippel, a colleague with the Ecumenical Institute (EI) took the categories of NikosKazantzakis' Savior of God and HermannHesse's Journey to the East imagery,and wrote a self-reflection. In Miles from Moberly: A Man's Journey To The 21stCentury, he rehearses both his external experience in space and time withthe roles he played and the story he spun. It is unfinished. One hopes that if writing is cumbersome, thatorally recording incidences in the remaining years of his life istechnologically available. His speakingis probably more down to earth than the syntactical requirements of writinganyway. He toucheson the paranormal in one (out of 50) chapter. In a poem, he asks god to get real,and sums up his Christian heritage: "wedo not require a Messiah" is God's Messianic Word -- a final word, theUltimate Word. To desire more than Godprovides is an illusion. That there isno savior is the Saving Word. Thelast two chapters are reserved for Jesus of Nazareth sans the Christ role and Mary of Magdala. Rippeltreats parental traits and history as definitive of the personae of offspring,not unlike the medieval penchant to explain things away on the unknown. Inour time, we are no longer preoccupied with final causality to explain things. Narrative of the way life is, suffices andsustains. Rippelexemplifies what will be the literary form of the "selfie" age, withGeorgie Bush's "love account" on his father close to the genre. I call these the "wellness unto life"accounts, to affirm the facticity of individuals with feet on the ground,neutral without the bias of dejado (ata disadvantage) at the gate, or in the garden of Eden. Rippel and I just are, our showed-up-ness ourvalue, for which the decision to be grateful becomes its own virtue. Theclassic lifetimes in Hinduism are four Ashrama,the student, the householder, the hermit, and the ascetic wanderer. Eighty as a very ripe age, the four lifetimesmay be transposed to increments of 20 years. The first is of youth learning. Nextis the adult establishing a household. The third is the hermit in self-consciousness to the minutest ofdetails, and the fourth is the ascetic wanderer who empties himself unto the wholeness(holiness) of creation, a wellness unto life! Shakespearehas seven ages in As You Like it, frominfancy to incapacity bookended by helplessness. Mine has five phasedexistence of 17 years each, the first, an age of innocence, the second, a journeyof adventure, the third, the expenditures in service, and the fourth,sharpening skills in a profession. Ijust entered my fifth, seven years of writing and ten years of silence to theportals of completion and oblivion. Allfive phases constitute a Wellness UntoLife journey, where birth is the supreme achievement and everything thatfollows a matter of choice. The questionis not the validity of my phases, the feasibility of the Hindu scheme, or Shakespeare'slaughter. What is the wellness unto lifethat your journey is about? Or, are youstill bewailing your sickness unto death? j'aime la vie yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!