Stories of Eternity

In the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the shadows, your thoughts draw you off to once familiar places. You hear forgotten voices speaking in wonder or joy or awe. How in the darkness you can see sunlight, and taste the winds of summers past, and gaze into the billowing clouds white on the horizon drifting along like old three masted schooners heading for some unexplored shore is but the faintest taste of grace. No matter the worries of the moment there is the vision of concord, of reaching another shore, of crossing over to a new land in a newness of being. Loneliness seems sometimes a constant companion that will not leave you be. God is the God who grants solitude, and the hope of perfect union. Joy is seeing Joy in another's eyes, or on their face, or hearing it in their voice, or in their laughter. When the oppressed are set free, when like God we are able to extend a bit of grace, something unalterable occurs, and nothing can take it away. In the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the shadows, sometimes you see everything as it really is. God is whispering in your ear telling you stories of eternity.

Sailing - Part 2

Ghosts, ghosts ,ghosts, for me there is no affirmation, only ghosts. I have only the wind and nothing else to cling to. Mine are the dark waters deep and still. The roads all lead to places that were, and are no more. The songs are lost in the winds and hopes are submerged and hidden beneath the waters. I have fallen asleep in the shadows and all the the world recedes, diminishes. Solemn is my song, forlorn and echoing. I am lost, pursued by ghosts, wandering through an alien and malevolent wilderness.

Sailing - Part 1

One windy day I made for me a little boat to sail across the sea. Half a walnut shell and a bright red maple leaf for sail. I had not string to rig it, nor any other thing. So in I climbed and raised my bright red leaf, and off I went, blown by the wind and tossed by the waves. I knew not where. I had no rudder and really did not care. I held fast against the wind though my knuckles ached, though my fingers felt that they'd soon give way. If I let go I'd lose my leaf. So the sea battered me, the wind grew frigid, and the boat heaved to and fro. I knew not where I was going only that I should go. Daylight faded, the winds and waves they did not cease. Off I went determined, headlong into the thickening darkness without even a star to guide me, no moon for dreaming, only the winds whispering and moaning, and the waves tossing me to and fro. I'd ceased to feel my hands, and it now it was my arms and back that ached, and still I did not let go. The whispering winds condemned me, and the waves they beat me relentlessly. I dared not sleep, and fought to stay awake. Then came the Ghosts to ride beside me and tell me all their sleepy stories. As I'd start to nod they'd try to pull me over into the deep dark sea beneath me. I'd brace myself against them holding fast to my leaf. I saw at last my face before me in the gathering light, reflecting in the sea. I realized then despite all my resolve that sleep had taken me without my knowing it. My hands were empty, I'd been betrayed by the weakness of my own arms. The sea, as still as glass, surrounded me. The winds went on without me, the ghosts had sunk into the darkness, lost in the depths of the sea. The slate gray sky, a diffuse light, gave no sign of time nor direction as i drifted in what seemed like circles in the sea. I'd touch the water and watch the ripples and wonder what shores they would wash away. I laid down my head but for a moment. When I lifted it the sea was reddish and lined with ridges and had turned to dust. I stood up, looked down and saw my dry white bleached-out bones, half buried in the sand. A steady breeze blew me up and away from my bones. I guess they'd become unnecessary. Castles of clouds grew along the horizon. I've always wanted to dance in the clouds, but I went right through them and kept going up and up and up until the Earth was but a shiny blue marble, and then a point of light, and then there where so many fading points of light that I lost it.

A Day on the Road

I realized something today. I know what chasing after the wind is. I can see how we all seek after the things that we feel we need, and want, and how they destroy us because we can never have them as we think we should. I have come to find that seeking them has a season, and when that is over we need instead to seek to eschew them, realizing that they are not really the things that we need most. Drugs, travel, good times, sex, food, relationships, order, disorder are just distractions. They are attempts to find meaning outside of ourselves, even seeking spirituality is a distraction, when in the end we must realize that we are just imperfect and needy and can never truly know the elation that we seek, that is we can never reach a state of continual elation, at least on this side of Heaven. If Heaven is our home then we will never be content here, but we cannot know Heaven until the days allotted for us here are spent, and we don't know that number...I am not a gifted writer who knows the words to write. The ideas that come to me are not sweet things that I relish or savor stewing them in my mind until they come out. They are burdensome things that gnaw at me, that burn in my hands, but ideas I can't let go of. My writing like my life is a struggle, I am conflicted, wounded, I am not one of the perfect and beautiful. I am not sure that I have any of the answers, except that the questioning becomes a form of knowing, and answering... I drove and drove, through the mountain passes, through the beating rain, fog, periods of sunshine, blinding light, deep darknesses, unable at times to see anything but vague shapes, crazy wrecks of spinning cars, not seen but indicated by skid marks. torn up sod, messed up road signs, uprooted trees. A friend read to me, in the sunlight as I drove, a book by Anne Lamott (titled Grace eventually), who fascinated me by her honest vulnerability,finding joy and life through pain, and emptiness, and loss. All the while I took in the scenery constantly sliding by, remembering and imagining, happy above all to be driving miles and miles of road. Time was meaningless except for the shifting weather and the westward creeping of the light. In the end in the darkness I spoke of the duality of nothingness, the duality of up and down, light and dark, + and -, this and that, past and future until my friend rebelled in laughter at the absurdity of trying to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. I am left alone in the darkness each night to contemplate these things, and I get lost in the infinitude of the infinitesimal, the fractal nature of the universe, attempting to connect a loop, settling at last, in the end,into a state of prayer, a reaching out. I am taken up and led out into it, traveling on and on and on.

"Woman, Why are you crying?"

They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken Him. I do not even know Him. Truth? What is truth? Father, Father why have you forsaken me? Struck in the face, flesh torn from His back, briers beat onto His head, this is my body that was broken for you, eat of my flesh, this is the blood, poured out for you, torn from me for you, they looked upon Him whom they had pierced, woman here is your son. They meant to break his legs to kill him on the cross, but they didn’t, they pierced Him instead and he bled water and blood, He died alone, they all abandoned Him. Write “He said He was the King of the Jews”, I have written what I have written. I wash my hands of this. For which of these words did you strike me for? What lie? They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken him, taken him. They led Him through the streets, horribly disfigured, bearing the means of His death. They spat on Him. They drove iron spikes into the hands of grace, the hands that healed the sick. They hated Me, they will hate you. His feet they pinned to a stake, the feet that walked across the sea. They you say? They? You. Me. My hands are stained with the blood of the water of life. Where have they taken my Lord? Where? Where? WHERE? IF only you would have come when we called you then he would still be alive. My brother is dead, yes I know I will see him on the other side, I know, what? Today? Surely there is a stench. Oh, oh, oh but how? HOW? How is it that He who saved others could not save Himself? Write “He said He was the King of the Jews” he said, he said…I have written what I have written, what I’ve said what I’ve written, written, written. Hands that healed, feet that walked on water, the water of life, life and not death. How is it that He could not save Himself? Father, Father why have you forsaken Me? They looked upon Him whom they had pierced, woman behold your son, hail the King of the Jews, by His stripes we are healed, His stripes, torn into perfect flesh, disfiguring the lamb. Where the Lion? the conquering King? laying there moaning in a pool of blood, torn to shreds. This, This is our King? Our King? Ours? Not mine, no not mine mine, the Lion of Jerusalem, the Cornerstone, how could I have let myself be so deceived? I tell you I do not even know this man! I am not His disciple. I was not with Him. A rooster crowed that morning that they crucified my Lord, the day I drove the spikes into the hands that would heal me, the day I lifted Him up, a spectacle of humiliation, and placed the sour wine to His lips. Do you love Me? Do you love Me more than these? Do you even love Me? Then feed My lambs, feed my lambs. They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have taken Him. He said to her “Mary.”