A fortieth birthday

This is one of the big ones in life for most people.  My son, Tai Rogers is celebrating his 40th year today.  I've posted about him before, so won't go through it all over. But here are the links, so you can see the photos that I've kept on my external hard drive, as well as here on blogger  In 2013. And in 2014. 

Some of the older links no long are active. Tai received his M.F.A. in ceramics at Indiana University, taught for a year, then spent a couple of years as the manager of the metals and woodworking lab at Indiana University. He and Kendra moved back to Colorado a couple of years ago, and he now is working with high school students near Mesa Verde park, to help them graduate and go on to college.

I wish him well as he moves into a more settled part of his life, both in career and maybe soon in housing.  I know he and Kendra are looking for a permanent home these days.

What shall a mother say when a son turns 40? Something different? Something more monumental than an ordinary wish for a birthday?  I'm afraid I don't know.  I'm looking to use some poetry to send him.

Each person is an incredibly sophisticated, subtle, and open-ended work of art.  
We live at the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless nature.  
Each of us needs to travel inwards from the surface
constraints and visit the wild places within us and answer the question:  Who are you?  
Who are you behind your role?  
Who are you behind your words?  
Who are you when you are alone with yourself?  
Who are you before you slip back safely behind the mask and the name by which you are known during the day?

If you can awaken the eternal beauty and light of your soul
you will break through the prison of certainty and bring light wherever you go.

John O'Donohue
From: Eternal Echoes