“I'm standing here until you make me move.”
I'm waiting. I'm waiting for your words. You don't know. You have no idea how much I crave the bread crumbs you sprinkle. I know they are actually stardust. You have not hidden your divinity from me. You can't. The first time I saw you cry, your tears washed away the mask. The first time I heard you scream, your anger burned down the facade. I used to pray you'd write for me. I never thought it would be like this.
I am waiting. Word of God speak.
...the music explodes in my headphones. The day seems like it took months to end. Oh dear God, I want only to hold you. Why did this Sabbath feel like so much work? The music is so loud that everyone is speaking like soundless mimes. I cannot take my eyes off you. I want to know baptism again. I choose it of my own free will, baby, as I chose it the first time...
“I'm closer to where I started
chasing after you.”
...can you read my thoughts as you read my heart? Can you recast this day for me in the eight hours before dawn? Can your touch reshape me into someone alive with joy, with passion, with strength? Will you open my eyes when you close my eyes? Will you read my desire across the scripture of my body...
“I'm falling even more in love with you.
Letting go of all I've held onto.
I'm standing here until you make me move.”
...I want to walk in the forest of your gaze. Bronze and emerald, you are tempered wild, fine sculpture in untamed domain. Sprinkle kisses along the path, little one. I will follow your lead. I will call-and-response to your gasp, your sigh, your breathless song...
“There's nothing else to lose.
There's nothing else to find.
There's nothing in the world
that can change my mind.”
And suddenly I know where I am. South by southwest, I have my North Star and she shines so blue, so cold, so sharp. I have seen the Southern Cross for the first time and since that night, tide rising, wind slicing, I have known why I came this way.
“I'm living for the only thing I know.”
There is a stone in my pocket. There has been a stone in my pocket since I was four years old. Not this stone. But a stone. Touchstone. Charged stone. Old world Christianity. “When the world gives us more than we can bare, love, we place it here,” and Grandmother tapped the small, river-rounded stone in my hand. She wiped my tears. She looked at the sky. She reached into her own pocket. She held up a single black stone. It was worn down in the middle. Like the power of rain drops, she had worn away the stone with her soft tapping, persistent touch. “Let go,” she told me and she turned and left me there. I was alone. I stared at the white stone. I tapped out my trouble like divine Morris Code. And I let go as I dropped it into my pocket.
Are we elevated from animals? Are we rulers and not ruled simply because scripture paints us that way? Or are we actually slaves to the power of the viral colony that awaits us around every unwashed public door handle? I think our lives are exactly as we make them. I think we are rulers of nothing but ourselves and guardians of everything else.
Action, reaction, chain-reaction. I am only the sum of what I hold. I am only the interwoven fingers of the hand I'm holding.
“What are you writing?”
“My Sunday sermon.”
“Do you have something to say?”
“I always have something to say, Summer.”
And the windows are open. The doves are making sounds. It is raining. There is rain on the tile floor. There is rain on my skin. Still hot from the shower. All the windows stand open. All the windows... there is no difference. Inside or outside. Night sky, skylights. I am just standing here, as seen and as hidden as anywhere else.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“I always have something to say, Lord.”
And we walked at dawn. The street was ugly. The concrete cracked from a long winter and a bad thaw. You handed me a stone from your pocket. The tears on your face were the silent kind I used to watch my father cry. You didn't need to tell me it was a touchstone. I took it and a shock ran up my arm and down my spine. “I can't carry it any longer,” you thought but I heard the words as clearly as I saw the fast moving clouds, white strands of eternity, across that pale morning sky. I slipped the stone into my pocket. It was heavy. It was beautiful. It was horrible. It now was mine.
We must surround ourselves with companions willing to recast our day for us over and over again. To reset the line of truth. To recharge the heart. We must do the same for them.
“What's new?”
“I hate the word 'actually.'”
“Hm.”
I am confident enough to be silent. I am sure enough to enjoy listening to another person talk. I do not have to weigh in. I like watching the way a mouth moves to form words only a moment after the brain has formed them. I have no desire to correct someone. I open my mouth when I am able to say, “Oh! That is something new. Thank you.” I have no interest in using my voice to prove to the world how great I am.
Whose life are you recasting? Who do you sprinkle stardust for?
“She has a lock of hair in her pocket
and a cross around her neck.
The hair is from a little boy
and the cross from someone she hasn't met yet.
She says she talks to angels
and they call her by her name.”
Christ, sometimes I cannot carry it all. Sometimes I cannot see my personal sky. Sometimes I am afraid to ask you because I am scared of what you will tell me. I am not ashamed not to have all the answers... I would be ashamed if I didn't fight and bleed to find them.
*whispering* Lord? Here I am...
Sometimes it is so much better to shut my mouth, open my ears and nod my head. Sometimes it is so much easier to carry the stone for someone else. I grow more when I listen than when I talk. I make a difference when I accomplish the impossible and tell no one but my God.
*whispering* ...covered in your rain...
Take a step. Keep stepping until it is no longer easy. Draw your own map and then make it real. Take a hand. Keep holding until it is no longer easy. Draw another's heart and then recharge it.
*whispering* ...it feels so right to remake my world.
When we reach out to the person least likely... when we see with another person's eyes... when we truly come to know our opposition... we finally see through the mirror clearly. We become full. We grasp the touchstone and shock runs through our body. We see for the first time.
We grow up.
When life becomes difficult, we become Christian.
EJ
Grandmother? I would have carried your stone. I wish, so often, that you had burdened me.
