Sitting in a night club in Mill Valley the other night next to performer Floyd Red Crow Westerman, I noticed that his face was full of a vitality that was missing last February when I videotaped him performing in a concert. When he got up and sang, the set was full of energy, giving a spiritual lift we'd never expect from a performer in his late 60's. Red Crow performed an encore, seemed ready for more.

The next afternoon, I asked Dennis Banks (Anishinabe elder) what happened to Floyd that gave him such vitality, such energy? He told me that Red Crow has new transplanted lungs!

I've studied eastern teachings for years, read and practiced breathing meditiations, but never with the impact that seeing Red Crow reborn had. Truely it's a wonder what the breath can do, and the gift of a new life is one that he shares with the audience in his performance.

A few days later, shopping for salad at a natural foods market I noticed Phil Lesh and his wife enjoying a quiet moment together picking out vegitables. Nothing special you might say, but the fact of them together making a meal together is a medical miricle since he's alive because of a liver transplant and a life style change that brought him a new life. Even in the small moments together there is a quality of together that warmed my heart.

These sights came at a time when I was thinking about the drudge cycle that I was caught up in, and considering taking a new direction in my life. The courage that it takes to undergo a transplant is beyond anyting that I know, even given that they would have died without the new organs. That they reached for life and were granted the reprieve is inspiring to me.

Certainly my friend Allen Cohen comes to mind also, Allen's new liver gave him only a few months. Yet Allen remarried his love Anne and treasured the time that he had. We remember his courage, his struggle in this YouTube video elegy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdh11aEslLE.

So I talked with my partner, my wife, my love Sharon about the choice and decided to open myself up to change, to embrace the possible, to trust my intuition. I'm making a job change that's scary, leaving the "security" of a 10 year position at 57 to try a new career. I want to open up from the stooped barely coping struggle, to join this new team reaching for a level.

Maybe it's crazy, but unless I'm willing to walk the line the grind just wears me down and I know that I've got more to give, there's more that I can do and who knows how much time is left? Having a partner who's willing to walk with me helps, and it's hard to leave the people who have become my friends at the University.

I talked with the team that I work with now, and learned that theywon't change, that the resources we need to be successful are not comming. I know that I've done my best to make the program succeed without me by training my successors, by building an organization that has useful capabilities unknown before I came, building systems that transfer our knowledge to the next team, and by planning the coordinated capital program for the next few years.

The shock that moved me was partly looking clearly at my tiny "raise", partly loosing vacation every month because the work load is just too much, and then seeing that the benefits that I've been promised are behind the receeding horizon along with the resources we need to be successful.

So the combined effect of seeing how wonderful it is to just breathe, to pick lettuce with my honey, to get up and stretch at dawn knowing that my skills and competency must flow with opportunity moves me to embrace change. I'm thankful for the opportunity and I know that it's a rare gift in this wild world.

Thanks for this morning, for the breath that energizes my fingers, for the friends who helped me to think this through.

Thanks.