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Nov 4, 2023

"I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all." --Rainer Maria Rilke

Passing Through the Storm

"What does it mean to be a person? Inevitably we think of people as individuals. A Google search supported by an experimental generative AI defines personhood as a state of being characterized by properties including intelligence, the capacity to speak a language, creativity, the ability to make moral judgments, consciousness, a soul, self-awareness. A person, Googles A.I. informed me, is also determined by social forms, by legal and kinship relationships. As relational as we humans are, we experience ourselves and our loved ones as separate beings who can be ours to possessour personal source of comfort and securityonly to discover that these seemingly solid individuals are subject to change. They can be lost..." Tracy Cochran shares more in the following piece that explores the poignant question of how to find joy in this suffering world.