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To Live or To Expiate

Expiate — To extinguish guilt or to atone In his essay, Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson says “I don not wish to expiate, but to live.  My life is not an apology, but a life.” Let’s live today.  Let’s pause and recognize this moment is different from the previous one and different still from the one yet-to-come.  From our bones and from our Soul, let us express this moment as who we are without apology.  Let’s decide to be ourselves fully.  Let’s speak what is ours to give voice to and be quiet where it doesn’t matter to us. Let us do what is ours to do and let others make their contribution with equal conviction. I often speak to the “how” one lives their life and the “what” one does through their life’s actions when officiating a memorial service.  These are two different ways to examine a life.  For example, I can Google my father’s name and pull up a portfolio of his work left behind.  This is the “what” is done in life.  And then there...

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