Michael Gray

Michael Gray

Michael Gray is the author of The Flying Caterpillar, a memoir, and the novels Asleep at the Wheel of Time, about whales, aliens, and humans, and Falling on the Bright Side, about his experience working with the disabled. He is the cofounder of Friends in Time (a nonprofit he founded with a friend who has ALS), and past board president of New Mexico Parkinson’s Coalition and Pathways Academy (a school for kids with autism and other learning issues). A regular contributor to various journals, Gray also writes a weekly blog on www.michaelgrayauthor.com.

Reflections on Outliving My Son

Journal Article

“My own life now lies scattered across the floor. But I know that the bridge between the breakdown of everything I thought I knew and the other shore that waits for me can only be crossed with a willingness to see Jon and myself anew.“


Searching for What We Already Know

Journal Article

I suspect that we can only find our way in the openness of space when we realize that we are already flying in it. It is the very openness of space, surrounding and filling us, that holds us aloft.


Listening to our Hearts

Journal Article

Since the death of my son two years ago, and in the ways that I have tried to fill the emptiness he left behind, I have encountered a yearning to discover a soul inside me; since only then can I believe that my son, Jon, sailed away safely in his.


Five Centuries of Self-Quarantine

Journal Article

I recently attended a talk by a Mamo of the Arhuaco—a teacher-priest charged with “maintaining the natural order of the world.” His people have lived on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountain in Colombia, isolated from the industrial world for centuries.