Eventually

The more I grow, the more I realize that the biggest events in my life were only discernible after many years had passed.

The ceremonies, the official moments of recognition, required attendance...those are not what changed my life, or made me who I am today.

Some of my clearest moments, were uneventful...but binding, and lasting, and huge in my own tiny life.

Standing in front of my mother, as she sits in a big chair, and feeds my baby brother...she says, "Hold out your hands. That is your left hand, and that is your right. Always." And I got it! It stuck! And today in my mind I stand in front of that chair and hold out my dirty, sticky little six-year old fingers for a mental moment, and I remember.

My father hands me a hatchet, and puts my hand right at the curve of the handle, and swings my arm, stopping at just the right point. "That is where you release it. See? Do you feel it?" and I do. I try it myself, and the hatchet flies and flips through the air and hits the wooden stump on its stand. I can do it! The neighbors teach their children to play baseball, but my father teaches me to be strong, and to be accurate, and to be different...and I love it!

Riding a bicycle down a country road, young and silly and hopelessly in love, and waiting for a sign, just any little sign, that this time it is not my imagination. It is real. It is forever. Please, God! And he smiles as we stop to rest. He tells me about the birds I can hear, and shows me the wheat, and what it says about our weather, and he gives me the countryside as a gift...and then I know.

Two little hands grab mine. They are dirty, and they are precious, and they are trusting...so trusting! "Mommy, I picked you this flower. It's beautiful." Yes it is, the most beautiful Dandelion in all of creation. And I place this event on the shelf with all the others. And I cry.

Espiritu

This one soul, like all the others
Full of anger, atrophied but foul
Driven by animus, doubt, fear, hate
Wretched, rotten, roaring, raucous
Pain-filled howl.

Runs, stumbles, falls against the stone
No more- numbered, nameless, no one
A lightning flash, a flare, a lick of flame
That burns the whole, the soul- ignites!
It is done!

And now...to work, to wait, to win! But the heart
yearns for peace, rest...the end...to depart!

Dinner

Food bores me to tears.
That's how I know that I have
Never been hungry.

Part 2

This is a continuation of sorts of last week's 3WW post.

As he stared blankly at the wall of progress zipping by on the dirty freeway, a small metal box ambled into view. It rolled in front of his little hole, bumping against the broken speeder and stopping.

The box was black...and nothing else. There didn't appear to be a port, any method of movement even, although he knew it had thrusters on the bottom just as he knew what it was here for. In his haze and confusion, amidst the sound of the acid rain rolling off the shed, came sudden cognizance; no it was recognizance. He had seen this thing before. Without time for more thought, he ran.

Out into the burning rain, slipping in puddles of oil and filth, and dodging grounders on the freeway ahead. He dove into a hole on the other side, and pressed his body into a crevice of the building there.

Behind him, like a horrible, infernal rose, his shed exploded. White hot flame incinerating it where it stood, and sending warmth even to this side of the freeway. The grounders nearby were lifted into the air, and as they began to hit one another, the man ran again. The speeders above sailed on, not unaware, but unaffected.

"They've found me," he growled to himself. And he turned to the alley behind him and ran. No destination in mind, only anger, hate and fear.

My Mentor

My path is darkened.
You walk beside me and shine
A light on the road.

Good Friday

We are each the love of Someone's life.
Someone who is willing to sacrifice everything for us.
Someone who will walk through death for us.
Someone who will wait for us, follow us, call for us,
No matter how far we roam.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13