Believing is Seeing

Although born into a home where faith was scorned, I found myself believing in God from childhood onwards. To my unjaded eyes the wonder and order of the natural world not just spoke but had stamped on every surface, Created by God.  How could anyone think otherwise? Indeed. 

As a teen and young adult I had several transcendant moments, and though I had no idea what they meant, they did cause me to reject a materialist worldview. Something was out there. Possibly someone. Although I wasn’t spending any time trying to solve the mystery, I did think it important enough that I would not have married someone who didn’t agree.

And when everything is running smoothly and life is easy – why rock the boat? But darker days come don’t they ? Days when you just don’t get it. Why me? What have I done to deserve this? How long?

While it certainly doesn’t feel good, those are perhaps the most fruitful times in our lives – if – and it’s a big if, we don’t look for ways to kill the pain. Pain is a good thing. It’s a message to our souls that something is amiss. There are so many ways to kill the pain. I’ve tried many. But if you want to grow, want life, the healthiest thing to do is embrace the pain. Let it do its work. It’s worth it.

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Believing is Seeing 

No one told me he had died
so when God called,
 I answered.
I told him all my secrets.
He told me some of his.

I hid every word
 like a child at the beach
stashing shells and rocks 
 in a  sturdy cardboard box,
to store the ocean’s roar
for landlocked days.

Time passed, light lapsed.

   Pleasure played me,
   gravity grabbed me. 
  The simple awe of knowing him
  got  shoved on a shelf 
  at the back of the closet,
got lost in the  dust -
  just a sock under the bed.

Cataracts formed on my spirit
eclipsing  the ambient light.
Not strobe - nor neon,
neither particle nor wave 
 pierced that night.
All were dulled,
palled by the shroud 
that clouded my soul.

The road is hard in the dark.

    A ray of hope from home today,
  a poignant  parcel sent my way.
   The scribbled note had this to say,
 "I found them in a  closet and 
I couldn’t throw them out.”

An ocean of  recollection 
washed  out of the box,
         a high tide of light          
 that had been ebbing out
for decades.
     Longside a stretched out lumpy sock,
        lay conches, whelks, the tumbled rocks!

Majesty and mystery,
 essence of the mighty sea,
 clung to them like limpets.

     From the sock, still intact, 
       a silent starfish blazed with fact,
        the blinding truth that I had lacked.

     Light finds its source in Him.
 

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