My Uncle Geza once told me: “The mind is a wonderful place to play.” Those words were his greatest gift to me. During my boyhood, he cultivated my curiosity, imagination, and discernment that now enrich my life as an adult. Across the arc of my years are adventures as a historian, writer, teacher, public official, corporate professional, non-profit executive, immigrant rights advocate, linguist, wood-cutter, long distance hiker, sometime cowboy, and conservationist.

I have also learned along the way that no clear boundary divides what is spiritual from what is material. Each flows through the other as distinct aspects of a reality greater than either one. Language and thought are integral to that reality but together they still aren’t great enough to express the whole of it.

Thinking is the mind at work; writing reveals bits and pieces of the material and spiritual qualities of the reality we call the Cosmos. Although Geza is gone his words remain, and I live them. The mind IS a wonderful place.