Go light

Anything could be taken away in one breeze of delight on a summer day, deep into the green light of water pooled in the falls. Except there is no breeze. The smell of this place: stone, water, and moss. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. It’s fresh, but not unspoiled. In any case it’s relief from the terrible humidity that hunts me down wherever I roam. Stillness is what’s needed today. There’s a ticking sound. What the spoiled smell is and what the ticking sound is, are hardly my concern.

I’m here to lay on the legendary rock. It’s charging me up with its power of coolness. It fills me with a grounding vibration. Veins of moss grow over my eyelids. I’ve never experienced such safety as this afternoon since the moment I claimed this bench of rock, a natural homeland for one, to lay on and absorb an eternity of cool.

I can’t stay here forever. I don’t know how long I’ve slept. The ticking continues. An insect chews the leaves of my pleasure vine, the shade of my resting place. Things could change. The shade and coolness of my enclave may dissolve into an oven. I’m not in control. I say a prayer and move on. There are small missions to dot my way, perhaps just errands.

*

A week of debilitating heat. All creatures are weakened. We sleep an uncomfortable sleep without up or down. We are filled with a sickness of heat. The remaining super power from my encounter with the rock is simply hope. I’m not a naturally patient woman, but when all else darkens a tiny light of hope hung on the high name of my redeemer gives me the power to wait. In my weakness what I can’t do is done. The feather of the most high touches me. Life,death, meaning, hope, transcendence all felt in the gentle landing in my heart of the spirit.

*

Finally a cool night hauled off the compiled heat of that week. A new day, the kind you can actually enjoy came. The kind of day where you can enjoy a walk and a talk with a friend, the way you used to. With the return of normalcy, and gorgeous multiplicity of new life, will small and modest things like a feather, a rock, a candle, and a name be remembered. Will hope and patience grow sans heat sickness? Hold on, hold on to what is given not as the world gives. Evenly stitched through good times and bad, I will remember who came for me to save.

*

I don’t know exactly what a blessing is. I imagine them like lucky cards. My errands, chores, daily missions are small- seemingly unimportant - except for these lucky cards, a new pack each morning, given to deliver as I go. Just little colored pieces of paper, sometimes invisible, seem to translate into goodness. Something for me to share with the inhabited world. This is nourishment. The only true food that can build us up. We can’t feed ourselves. That will never do. Help absolutely must come from the outside, from the source, from our maker.

*

I’ve laid in the tomb of my sin. I felt the heat of it, the darkness of it, the unbearable isolation. For a short time I enjoyed the cool of death, the relief of the cold ground. But the greatest joy is to live again, forgiven, reclaimed, remade, empowered to love as He first loved us. Sometimes the truth can only be spoken as fiction, and found as poetry. We can’t control anything in this world, but we can follow the dream of our hearts.