Last summer I went to the desert with friends to watch some art burn. There were massive, intricate, ornate temples and pagodas created solely to be enjoyed for a few days after which they were set alight; offerings to the Gods of impermanence. The night of the great fire was a spectacle unlike any I have ever seen. Tens of thousands gathered around a human image standing hundreds of feet over our heads, the product of months of sophisticated engineering and hundreds of hours of labor, and we stared waiting for it to return to dust and ash; just as we too will one day return to dust and ash.

That night as the great wooden man burned, Grace burned away the small image of my ego allowing me to stand humbly in the company of other men, a grateful elder with trembling hands and another marked with the willingness to say yes, and for a few moments I lived beyond the walls of wrongdoing and rightdoing in that field of companionship the poets write about. And I felt free.