I missed the group’s first meeting because I was out of town and so I discovered that our death date was set as September 3, 2007.  So now I have eleven months to live.

 

I have been using the book, a little, during the past month so I cannot complain that I was cheated of time.

 

What I reported was that I was confronting my major fear in life which is the fear of rejection.  I have an ambition that will outlive the year of this exercise. I have been putting off following up on that but now I have shoved forward.  A part of working up to doing that was having a very frank discussion about it with my wife.  

 

I have also taken one of the suggestions in the book:  setting up an altar.  I am not big on altars, although I am not down on them. Altars are jusst something that have not yet spoken  to my condition.  

 

I do have a prejudice, though.   I am a Quaker and a plain Quaker, at that.  My sitting practice is as austere as my Quakerism.  I am a wall sitter:  no chants, no visualizations, no mandalas. Ok, a candle and some incense, once in a while.  And, ok, sure, sure, sure, the incense holder is an eight inch tall Kwan Yin but...

 

But I have cleared the mantle over the fireplace in my office here at home and I have started to put things on it that are meaningful, that signify important events, periods or people in my life.