I felt very moved by your posts, Steely and Flutterby. There aren't any honey-coated cliches around this - it's all wonderful, it's all okay. But I do believe.. in the heart of me... that life, however exhausting, difficult, unsatisfactory and challenging - painful - is better than no life. Than a life in which there are no problems, no suffering. And for me I feel that J has come to me as much for me as for him... he forces me to grow, to face myself, to face life when often I want to run away... I don't have a sense of "God" exactly but I do believe that god is life, and how things are just however they are, and that meeting situations with love and compassion moves things, heals things, makes things possible, creates a little warmth and light within us. That goodness exists and is a real force and that we all respond to that and want that, in our heart. That, in the end, only compassion makes sense as a vision of the world. But it is not easy...