Life is an amazing strangeness. We arrive as beings bundled in a tiny, material body, and we spend the entire arc of our lives trying to figure out what is going on and what it is all about. To live a human life is to be caught in a process of alchemy. The world is a miraculous crucible that burns us, pounds us, and whirls us around in a rough process that eventually transforms us, remakes us and teaches us deep lessons. We wind up in a very different place than where we began. We become wiser about ourselves and reality, and larger than when we started. The 81 poems in this little book chronicle one persons experience of lifes crucible. Though they record an individual journey, given the patterns in human experience they also have aspects that are universal. Many readers will find material that is deeply familiar in their own lives. We are all engaged in working our way back to Living Light.