This is the title of my Divinity School Master’s Thesis – for which, due to its major internal essay of “reciprocity and creative interchange,” I was granted Honors at graduation. I was 32 at that time. I am now 86 and still in time – and, occasionally, still on time.  Today, I am more pungently aware, in&on time, that SHARING life with others/an-other is so fundamentally absolute to human meaning and that fulfillment known as happiness. I lost my life’s companion, Marilyn, eleven years ago. All my thoughts and writings since then – have continued our own “destiny of sharing.” That Hold of Memory!

However, being, mostly, alone now – don’t even have a dog anymore —  I am living the “stark” reality of that “destiny” — having lost  the “ life-sharing-other” of  it. There are the children, grandchildren, email and Facebook “address-addressee” happenings – but that intimate our-time-shared existence-companionship “presencing” with an other person is gone. Such is the draw of senior living facilities for those who have lost a spouse, ability to take care of themselves adequately; and family connections are not manageable. In these senior, assisted living, facilities there is a community of sharing a same destiny. But, for many, such is beyond their economic ability.  Though I sense some efforts to make it more affordable. But making that commitment to leave one’s life of “independence” is a momentous decision. Assisted living should be an environment wherein one maintains that independence, which is critical to an authentically fulfilled —  “shared destiny.” A Manifest Destiny of Odyssean Kairos, indeed.

I you can pardon my verbiage, while grasping its substance, then you can see independence in the dimensions of AWARE-BEWARE-CARE-DARE (AWBECADA)for. Each must bring their own AWBECADA to the SHARE. Thus, we have an authentic AWBECADASHARE !! OK! So you don’t want some new terminology to complicate existence’s grasp for simplicity of understanding. Then, just consider the verbs: to be aware, to dare, to care, and to share.  So the formula: S=ABCD/2. Don’t want formulae? Well, that brings us back to “plain-ole” sharing of lives . . .authentically and daily in the shared contexts of meaning, morality, mortality — and ever so significantly – a shared destiny – for which there is only “one time” it can happen: THIS LIFE! THIS NOW! THIS SHARING! THIS DESTINY! THIS HOME!

O! How I wish I still had someone to share — our shared destiny – with: hear the same birds, smell/feel the same flowers, breathe the same air – walk the same path holding hands. It seems, without that someone, I’ve been led more and more to “grasp” the life concept of the COVENANTAL HOLD (COHO).

Alas, the AWBECADASHARE OF THE COHO!! So easy to say and so easy to do. If we covenant with the world of life – we will feel/live its HOLD. Therein does the “shared destiny” continue with relevance of a shared consciousness with life. In that sentence lies the concepts of destiny-divinity-design. Indeed, that “shared consciousness” is taking me to a more throughgoing study of “consciousness” itself. Indeed, the sublime(sacred) depth of sharing is that of a SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS – thus COHOSHACON.

This is ever so contingent in this era of coronavirus and its stay-at-home-keep-your-social-distance directives. We are forced into a more solitary/confined (quarantined) existence. Perhaps the time has come when the reality of A Destiny of Sharing is so necessary to conceive globally and how that destiny can be real for us in both the conscious intimacy of persons and that “sharing feel” for the CovenantalHold of life in our daily existence. This is why I exude/extol breathing’s inhalation&exhalation in my writings. Nothing’s so daily/ontologically relevant to this AWBECADASHARE OF THE COHOSHACON . . . as breathing. Seems there’s no consciousness or hold of thought or structured-patterned sense of place-space-time — without it. More on that later. I just bet, now&future, that this COVID-19 era will enliven our keenest sense of A DESTINY OF SHARING&THE BREATH OF LIFE. O! GEN-i-US!/SOBEUS! ————- MDOK…5/26/20…[ These amalgams of language are to stress the realities they represent.]