The next few posts are taken from "morning pages" I wrote over the last year. It's fascinating to see what changes and what remains the same. See what you think.....
I know that if I were in Spain right now that I’d be in some
plaza watching these clouds drift overhead, minding their own business like a
lovely woman peering at antiques over a table at the bazaar. In the middle of a
thought or a question, their beauty would startle and calm me at the same time.
Clouds are like old friends who's every incarnation you think you know, but
surprise you with the subtle power of their charm.
There seemed to always be a “we” there, even in the middle
of nowhere in a windowless room of an albergue. There would certainly be
someone to drink with, to share the sense of pilgrimage. That’s why it’s
sometimes confusing that in my hometown I find so much solitude. Everyone is so
lost in their personal orbits that I am acutely aware that my presence is not
needed; it only ices the actual cake.
A TV drama’s character alluded to a sentiment I’ve long
entertained in my own life, the idea that one can “borrow” a family and
therefore afford to neglect the building of their own. My 20’s involved the
extreme interlacing of two worlds, and today leaves me bereft of any contact
with children I witnessed being born; whose first sounds heard included my
involuntary exclamations at the wonder of their arrival.
So like the wayward, well-meaning character on the screen, I
find myself piecing together fragments of family wherever they can be found.
With each attempt I realize with the surprise of a child watching a clowning
adult’s thumb separate and reattach that surely I must have know that my life
would not look anything like other people’s. Did I think something would
magically appear to make everything fit together? The answer is, just like that
little kid, I actually did. I’m not stupid, but there’s an irresistible appeal
hoping for illogical outcomes. It’s more fun to think that way, and everyone
seems to end up amused in the process.
What I really want to say is that it feels like
resurrection, all the suffering and little deaths I’ve endured, and I wonder if
Jesus feels isolated and a little aloof. It must have been strange to walk down
those Jerusalem streets in his glorified body and think, “This is where I
dragged the cross before the people who work in that building over there stuck
a sword through my lungs. Well, I’ll be.” He must know that they can’t hurt him
anymore, and it must have felt like a thousand years had passed even though it
was only three days later he rose up to chat with the women who were weeping at
the entrance of his burial cave.
