It is a simple pass-fail test. It is the only test. When the chips are down, when the sky has fallen, when you sit in ashes, when the concrete walls close, when you flail without hope of rescue, Can you be human? And by human, I mean fully human. I mean thinking. I mean feeling. Open and responsive. Honest and articulate. Grounded in your body. Integrated into your environment. A person among persons. I have watched people all my life fail this test. It has ceased to be amazi

I suppose my time as a government bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., prepared me for the world. I was a creature of emotional immediacy who was always ready to risk for the sake of others. Rules, regulations, red tape. These were so many blanks on a form I did not want to fill out. It was a job that paid good money and that was a living death for me. My skills, emotional and expressive, were merely liabilities, shameful things, not to be recognized or discussed.