Response

I think of the slights that wound our hearts. A careless word. A deed unnoticed. A call or request not returned. The back of someone when you so needed their face. The inattentiveness and invisibility felt. 

And then to ponder, this morning, when my eyes opened and all, all of life opened its arms and said "I am yours little one!" To ponder .... how did I respond?

To Mark Another's Calendar

My ability to read fading so fast, I do not use the precious gift to read the news, the news of violence. I did so last night and my soul felt as faded as my eyes. Then my spirit whispered of the wounding that leaves life but penetrates and tears asunder the heart.

The closing of one's heart to another sends forth an arrow and bullet that shatters not the physical self but wounds the essence of the other's I AM. Can I not see a group of people, or even one, and in closing my heart allow their bodies to continue but steal from them, he or she perhaps the very thread they needed to believe? No reporters would gather, the world or community would not be in shock. That sentence a blessing for the closer and yet sad that no one would notice the victims.

 We mark the days of violence with anniversaries.  We will not forget. And yet today, for some, for those whom I close my heart and wound, today will be a day they will never forget.

Sweet mercy, may their hearts calendar boldly write only of a blessing.

Forgiving Water

Getting out of the car I saw a little boy throwing rocks, as little boys are want to do. One rock went astray and hit a car. With a quick swat to his bottom, his mother angrily uttered the ultimate threat, "Wait til I tell your father." The little one's day exploring the fall woods and mountain crashed into tears. 

Pondering the scene and my shiver, I knelt beside the lake and gathered four treasured river rocks. Rocks and feathers are precious to me. But what of the rocks I have thrown that have gone astray even if in joy or simple lack of maturity or knowing and have harmed another? Not being wise nor a time traveler, I cannot take them nor the harm back. Releasing the rocks back into the lake, knowing the hearts whose names I breathed and those names I do not know, could not hear as I whispered, "forgive me."

 I bet his father threw rocks. Reaching into my pocket I pulled out the rock I carry when I walk and released it with a whisper for the little boy. The rock he threw was released, errant perhaps, but it is gone. As I watched my rock settle upon the lake bed of silt, I prayed the little one would not be left with an even larger rock to carry in his heart.