Contemplation is Preparation

What people see are externals; physical attributes, profiles and position, passions and power—

or lack thereof.

People see actions and assume motivation;

people see doubt and assume weakness. What people see is not me.

I am more than my package, more than my history, more than my gifts, and

I need to be listened to.

I shouldn’t need validation, but how do I know I really exist if I don’t hear back from the universe I walk in?

Reading alone in a window seat, viewing nature from my perch, writing poetry and capturing all I see in drawings and photos, words that rhyme—I used to think that would be enough. It would be like playing cello on a deck in a wild, ethereal Alaskan wood—no one listening except the trees and sky and creatures hidden from view. Mystic communion with the world.

Romantic nonsense.

Contemplation is preparation—not enough just as is.

If it does not prepare me to worship or serve or commune with others, meditation and creation are empty romantic drivel. And if there is no one to hear, then

the ribbon of music drifts on the air and is just as lost to the cosmos as if it had never been played.

So I need to create, but I also need you.  

Are you listening to me?

For Something More

I woke early in the dark and cold with only red numbers projected on the ceiling, confirming that yes, it is early, and yes, it is still dark 04 hundred.

I lie here awake. The pain has been my alarm, and I am so tired,

tired of tired,

tired of it. And I long for heaven.

When you are strong, heaven is an ever-after long time ahead—a warm, fuzzy promise for after I have collected all my joys

and toys

and am done with them, ready to move on. But as time wanes and the body fails,

what I have played with seems much more shallow;

what I thought would last forever is fading fast, and

my perspective is turned to what is ahead rather than what is behind

. . . or now.

And the nice ever after becomes a longing, and the firmly held hope becomes a thing of desperation because if there is nothing more—nothing beyond

this,

weakness,

betrayal,

the emptiness of Solomon days,

then there is no hope at all. It—

life—energies spent—

will have been the unproductive works of fools. And we will know that as we drift toward annihilation.

Hope makes sense of it.

God makes sense of it all.

Why would violence unsettle us?

Why would unfaithfulness feed bitterness in our hearts?

We might as well cry as laugh—just as well harm as help. Nothing would matter—

and yet it does.

Even those who profess a no-god know we are made for something more.