If compromise and disappointment have a home, it is midlife. Here, suffering is like breathing. Longing is like dreaming. Standing midstream in the abrasive forces of life, author N. Thomas Johnson-Medland has learned to wade through the erosion and entropy of failure and incompleteness. And yet, in spite of these massive forces attempting to wear down the very vitality that sustains life, he has come to abide in the fact that life is amazing, wonder-filled, and truly awesome. In this book, Johnson-Medland teaches us that our place in the cosmos is full of joy. Our island is hope. Our vision is beauty. Let these forces do their best to wear us smooth. For in them, we can find refinement and grace. Bathed in Abrasion invites us swim among the abrasive forces of life: wilderness, war, suffering, water--they are all a part of the poems of our lives. Watch for the meter of erosion and decay. Listen for the sound of sloughing off. For just as all things decay, they are also changing shape into a new becoming. Nothing is lost; everything belongs.

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland is Director of Psychosocial and Spiritual Excellence at BAYADA Hospice. He is the author of River Bending, Coming Back Home, In The Same Place, Bathed in Abrasion, Bridges, Paths, and Waters; Dirt, Sky, and Mountains, Cairn-Space, Entering the Stream, Along the Road, From the Belly of the Whale, Danse Macabre, Feed My Sheep; Lead My Sheep, Windows and Doors, For the Beauty of the Earth, Duende, and Turning Within. He lives a stone's throw from the Susquehanna River in Columbia, Pennsylvania - just outside Lancaster - with his wife, Glinda. Tom and Glinda have two adult sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel.