BY DAVID RICKEY — A snippet of one of Dylan Thomas‘s great poems has been popping into my mind a fair amount recently:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees 
is my destroyer.

To me it’s about the “life force” that will also eventually bring about my end. In some spiritualities, like Hinduism, there is a “god” for both creation and destruction (Brahma and Shiva). I prefer to think of it as one force.

Christianity speaks of incarnation and hints at “dis-incarnation.” In my view life and death are just that, becoming flesh and leaving the flesh. Buddhism speaks of death as “dropping the body.” Another great sage, “Emmanuel,” says “Death is like taking off a too-tight shoe.

I think of all that as I watch the buds appear on branches (“the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”) and also as I have watched several close friends die recently and contemplate my own demise (not soon expected, but sooner than I used to think).

A wild rollercoaster ride

The life force takes a body and then, after a time, lets it go. We have begun Lent, where it is said “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” But I don’t see myself (or you) quite that way. Rather I see that life has incarnated in this body for a time, and what a wonderful time, full of amazing experiences and challenges. But clearly, it is for a time. Eventually the physical “in-flesh-ment” which is this incarnation wears out and falls away.

Teilhard de Chardin said: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

9 Ways to Deal with Loss: A Soul’s Code Slidehow

That shift of emphasis makes all the difference. The spirit is the fundamental aspect. This physical body and the experiences we have with it are not unlike a carnival ride, perhaps a roller-coaster, but still a ride that comes to an end and we get off. The only difference is that at a carnival, you expect the end to come (if it’s too wild a roller-coaster you welcome it). But with this life we somehow forget, or never quite realize, that it is bound to end.

Comfortable in my own (temporary) skin

The same force that becomes the flower also causes the roots to burst, or the petals to fall. That’s the way it is. I am only an experiment of this amazing life force, incarnating in this particular body at this particular time.

I am trying to play within this period, create something that has both meaning for me and a positive impact on other incarnations playing out their “human experience.” Above all, I want to experience being human as deeply and truly as I can, which means being fully alive and working with each level of experience as it comes.

In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons Lucy says, “Why does life have to have ups and downs? Why can’t it be just one up after another?” That’s not the way life goes, and I wouldn’t want it if it did! It’s Lent. Spring is here. Here’s to another upswing of the cycle.

David Rickey is an Episcopal priest, Soul’s Code co-founder and counselor in San Francisco who does a weekly ministry at a residence for the elderly in northern California. Follow David on Twitter.

Michelle (right) with her father and sister by the Muskoka River

What’s the difference between praying for something and crossing your fingers? Is ‘going for the jackpot’ spiritually incorrect?

BY MICHELLE MORRA-CARLISLE – With $100 I can buy a lottery ticket that could win me a car, a big house in the city or a lakeside mansion in cottage country. I can’t afford the ticket, but have been known to buy one anyway because I badly want a lakefront cottage.

How else will I get one except through luck or a miracle? Luck might make it happen, but would it be spiritually enlightening?

Entrepreneurs and religious types don’t believe in luck. The former would tell me to buckle down, work harder and build a more lucrative career. The latter would say that whatever cottage I do or do not end up with has more to do with what my intention is — does it lead to a higher spiritual purpose? That’s the difference between “sheer luck” and synchronicity.

Luck and material wealth

Luck suggests that whatever good or bad thing happens to a person is by accident or chance. And oh how we try to sway the outcome – through prayer, rabbits’ feet, frequent purchases of lottery tickets or cranking of slot machines.

Others are not content to hope for chance or divine intervention, but attempt to take the reins of their own destiny. An American entrepreneur who was born and raised in Canada once told me what she saw as the biggest difference between the two countries. She said Canadians tend to be “too easily contented,” and that Americans have a knack for achieving greater wealth “because they’re never happy.”

Sadly, ambition and games of chance don’t always bring good luck. When I pass the local Bingo hall I see teen moms and destitute grandmas, none wearing smiles. And while there are priceless benefits to prayer, luck isn’t one of them. A sports team that wins a championship might believe God was on their side, but what about the losing team that also said a prayer before the game?

How I learned luck the hard way

I learned about luck the hard way when my father, after brain surgery complications, was in a coma with no chance of recovery. As I prayed in the hospital chapel, “Please let him live,” I was suddenly struck by the unfairness of my request. In a place where no doubt there were children dying of leukemia and young mothers dying of breast cancer, who was I to believe that I or my dad deserved special treatment from God?

Here is the strangest part. I have felt the greatest peace – not joy, but peace – when surrounded by the worst “luck.”

In that same hospital where my father was dying, the intensive care unit waiting room was a place of sheer misery. My relatives and I and the relatives of other dying people were exhausted from many sleepless nights of worrying and sobbing. But when we heard that our loved one wouldn’t make it, the clenching stopped, and the misery turned into the strangest feeling of warmth. I know that we all felt it. At the worst time of my life, why did I feel so wrapped up in an invisible hug? It felt so good I didn’t want to leave.

The second place I experienced bad luck and serenity was a small art gallery, where the artists and most of the patrons were people with schizophrenia. I was there as a reporter. Compared to my own lot in life, theirs was tragic. Yet I swear, the artists who greeted me were the most at-peace people I have ever met. Their horrible, incurable mental illness had cost them their jobs and homes and alienated their families and friends, yet in this tiny chalet where they could paint and sculpt together they radiated something wonderful. Again, I didn’t want to leave.

Can people achieve serenity or even happiness without luck? Maybe it’s not what we have on the outside, but what we make of it inside. It is possible to lose everything – like mourners, schizophrenics, or Indian gurus who give up all worldly possessions and still find the “peace that passes understanding.” They have nothing yet they have peace. Cottage or no cottage, I’d like to get me some of that.

BY AUGUST TURAK – I was 21 years old. And for the first and only time in my life, I was sure I was about to die. I was in the passenger seat of my 1963 day-glo green Ford Econoline van with a bubble-shaped skylight on the roof and a madman behind the wheel – a West Virginia hillbilly who happened to be my Zen Master. We had been on our way out West when he’d gotten news that his son was in trouble back in Wheeling, and now he was barreling home with me in tow to do what he could.

The trip had started out two days before on an almost comical note. On a cold dark morning at 5:30, his usual starting time, I was coming up his front steps to pick him up. My van was parked across the street and according to his careful instructions, was full of enough tools, extra tires, and spare parts to rebuild it on the fly if necessary. And because of the Arab oil embargo that year, it was stocked with fifteen gallons of spare gasoline in three five-gallon cans.

Before I could knock, a shadowy apparition, backlit by the hallway light, burst through the door. He obviously had about five layers of clothes on over his short, stocky body. On his head was one of those ridiculous fur-lined black vinyl hats with a fur-lined bill that fastens to the front. The chin straps, which no one who owns one of those hats ever seems to snap, hung loosely to his shoulders, and in his hands were two rope-handled paper bags with enough turkey drumsticks, hard boiled eggs, and bananas to feed us both for a year. This menu was his way of saving time and avoiding restaurant expenses on the road. But what really caught my attention were his outlandish calf-high boots which I am convinced were one of a kind, and which are beyond my powers to describe.

Sensing the question behind my slack-jawed look, his blue eyes lit up with a twinkle. “Yeah,” he said, “I got my mukluks on and I’m ready. I’ve rid’ these stage coaches before. That van of yours has no heat, no seat belts, and it drives like a greased pig. But I reckon I’m more than a match for it. Give me ten square feet to land on and I’ll bring you home OK.”

Blind faith

I was about to find out if he was as good as his promise. On that black, bitterly cold night we were racing home in white-out conditions down the mountainous section of Interstate 70 just before it reaches Wheeling, West Virginia. There were several inches of icy snow on the road already, and he was going way too fast for me and that rickety old van. He had the little 170-cubic-inch engine (which some engineer had decided belonged under a thin metal cover between the seats) wound up so tight I couldn’t hear myself think. Everywhere I looked I saw only imminent disaster.

The windshield wipers barely worked under normal conditions; if the blades had ever been replaced it hadn’t been by me. All I could see in front of us was the fuzzy red glare of what I guessed were tail lights swirling around even faster than the snow. The wind, gusting continually, was pushing us all over the road. Then with a loud shloomp a huge clump of slushy snow splattered the windshield.

Involuntarily recoiling, I jerked my head toward my passenger-side window and found myself staring straight into the wheel hub of a tractor trailer. It was intent on passing in the right-hand lane and was busily spewing wet snow onto my windshield in the process. The wheel was getting closer and closer. Hypnotized with terror, I just watched it inch up.

With a whoosh the truck’s back draft hit, bucking the unstable van left toward the face of the mountain. Looming huge in the headlights, the mountain seemed to lean over, ready to grab us.

In a panic I ratcheted my head toward my driver. He was desperately working the wheel and trying to turn us out of the slide and into the truck’s draft all at once. I’d purchased the van from the phone company. It had a broken frame, and though I’d had it welded, now the front didn’t quite line up with the back. Worse, the steering linkage was old and tired, leaving the wheel with way too much play in it.

This, combined with the snow, the wind, the truck’s buffeting, the nonexistent visibility, had my Zen Master frantically whirling the wheel first one way and then the other faster and faster, like some cartoon character steering a storm tossed ship. The only thing needed to complete the scene would be the wheel coming off in his hands.

He finally pulled us out of the slide, but was now relying only on the steady push of the truck’s draft to keep us from sliding under its wheels. All I could think was: What the hell are we doing in the passing lane? My God, why doesn’t he just slow down and let the damn truck pass? But slowing down just wasn’t in his nature. I was struck by the bat-out-of hell determination etched into his face. It was a face that had made a habit of staring down life and had gotten to like it. If most of us are like candles, this guy was a laser.

My driver never looked back. At that moment, the expression on his face and his purposeful glow seemed to light up the van. With his seat pulled so far forward that he loomed over the steering wheel, that small man looked large.

After what seemed like an eternity, the truck finally passed, and the vacuum this created literally picked the van up and sucked it toward the cliff on our right. Somehow we didn’t go over but instead reverted to wobbling along at what passed for normal in that crazy van on that crazy night.

Moment of truth

That’s when I snapped. I was scared stiff and an hour or so of this was all I could take. Trying unsuccessfully to catch my breath, I heard a voice in my head screaming, How did I get into this mess? What was I thinking? Who is this guy? This can’t be happening. Then I heard the gasoline sloshing around in the cans behind my seat and decided I had to make my move before the next tractor trailer bore down on us.

“Don’t you think we ought to cool it?” I said, shocked by the contrast between my firm intentions and the plaintive plea squeaking from my constricted throat.

“What?” he shouted over the whining motor.

“Don’t you think we ought to cool it?” I repeated loud enough for him to hear me, then glanced furtively in his direction.

I was about to mention the gasoline, but his face, contorted with effort and concentration, swung around and fixed me with those amazing blue eyes. An instant later, all the tension drained from his face. It moved from amusement to a grin that grew wider and wider until all five layers of clothing, goofy hat and mukluks began shaking with laughter.

“What’s the matter Oogie, scared to die?” He shouted with mock seriousness, unable to stop laughing. “If you are, then ride the roof, my boy, ride the roof! From there you can jump off any time you want. You told me you wanted adventure. Here I am riskin’ my neck to deliver, and you’re busy pumpin’ Hail Marys out one end so you don’t make a mess at the other. I know how it is. This Zen stuff’s fine for a sunny day, but when things get tight, call in the cavalry.” He went off into another fit of laughter.

The little blood I had left in my extremities went rushing to my head. I had been saying Hail Marys, but when I’d started and how many I’d said I couldn’t say. In fact if he hadn’t mentioned it…but how did he know? Had I been praying aloud? But the noise… we were shouting just to be heard, and it was too dark to read lips.

When I recovered a bit, I noticed something had changed. He was still a whirling blur at the wheel, but when he looked over, he had the look of someone genuinely concerned.

“Listen,” he finally said in a voice so soft it was almost feminine. So soft, in fact, that amidst all the noise I wonder to this day if he actually spoke or just projected his thoughts into my head.

“Everything’s all right. Everything’s got a purpose and everyone a destiny. I don’t know exactly how things between me and you are supposed to play out, but I do know this: They ain’t going to play out tonight. You’ll see. We’ll be home soon. Everything is all right.”

It was as if an invisible hand reached out, stroked me gently, and pushed me back into my seat. I took the first real breath in what seemed like days and closed my eyes. I noticed with fascination that my racing pulse returned to normal without my help. In that moment I wouldn’t have traded my seat on that 1963 Ford starship with anyone. The next thing I knew we were pulling up to his house, back in Wheeling, safe and sound.

August Turak is a seeker, writer, and speaker who has dedicated his life to teaching others how to prosper spiritually, professionally, and personally through his philosophy service and selflessness. Winner of the Grand Prize in the John Templeton Foundation’s Power of Purpose Essay Contest for his essay Brother John, he is a frequent contributor for Forbes.com and AdvertisingAge. He is currently working on a book based on his highly acclaimed article Business Secrets of the Trappists that chronicles his fifteen year journey living with the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey as a frequent monastic guest.  For more, visit AugustTurak.com, follow him at Forbes.com, or email August@augustturak.com.