The Sound of Loneliness

Every human has felt loneliness when friends aren’t around, friends have moved away and friends can’t come out to play. Evolution allows us to experience these ambiances to learn what comes next. Are we ones to falter, ruin an evening, a week-end, or muster joy in what we might have missed had our friends been around. It is these treasures that the spirit places in our midst. Most often family members that we might not wish to spend time with come alive allowing us to appreciate them for who they truly are, God’s blessing to us.

As age comes upon us pressures mount words are spoken or not, leaving hearts hollow cavities to fill. Some turn to the bottle some to limbs others to remedies cursing legalities engulfing their sorrows. Never finding the bottom of what truly ails them they run to catch the wind. Decades pass then one day a gesture resonates that piercing pain and if lucky would play they stop, linger, fight the embarrassment and shame and face the bastard straight on.

The sound of loneliness can only be felt at the bottom of one’s heart. Dropping a coin in a tin it reverberates the echoes of emptiness. Alone on the ocean with only sky above sea below screaming thoughts of what hasn’t been stares at you in ghosts. Stirring visions migrate into your soul across water evaporating long after consuming your fear.

How to go grasp what was once your true being. You reach out and hear

“You’ll figure it out?”  

You’re instantly back at the first blow that took you away to the depth of despair. Yearning like a babe simply to be held, to return to when you understood. Vacuity envelops you, drowning, unable to breath of what could have been. Ocean floors provide no consolation exits to rise in. Wide eye you float unconsciously unable to rescue your dream. What was it you were to do? To become?

This is your last chance to ride that train. It’s leaving the station with one destination your lungs need to expand or be crushed by twenty years of weight. Time forges ahead, it is the one constant. It knows not your aspirations nor does it care, it’s only purpose is to rhyme. Your job is to capture seconds into devotions, intentions and dedications.

To make a story of your life, rich in depth, shallow in distress and regrets.

Sometimes it is those that seem unlikely/ That do things that no one can imagine

Isn’t this what God asks of us every day? To be all that he has created each one of us to do? Somewhere in life our rush, our haste outdoes our imagination, our greatest gift to one another. Let’s make a plan to do something so wonderful for ourselves every day that we anticipate the morning to create for another entire day. Springing to life in all of us the joy that plants a seed so deep that the world can't undo.

Do you ever wonder what someone on the other end of the world is doing? And in 2006 when I was in Ghana I met 2 people that changed the world for the better, my life was forever changed. Anna was a 65 year old teacher that was devotedly religious. Church was at 6:00 prior to our teaching day and at 6:00 at night. Her words were few yet fierce. When discussing gender issues and men thought it alright to fondle their high school female students. Her force came alive. I was asked to mediate and quickly relinquished the floor to her. Quietly, serenely her words cut through color, gender and skin.

“God is our witness, our compass, and in times of temptation, CRY TO HIM, SCREAM TO HIM, yet never let your hands touch another woman.”

Silence was deafening.

 There are few people that followed God as closely as she did. I feel so blessed to have met her, listened to her wisdom, and pondered her silence. She died 6 months after we left Ghana. The world will truly miss her.

 An elderly man, that is a proverb, as there are so few with the onset of aids. Walking in the side street on our day off I met him days prior to leaving. I was chewing on a raw carrot I’d bought at a road side stand…..not fully paying attention….I noted that he cocked his head as I passed by. I stopped and drew near. Boys were playing soccer with a make shift ball made out of plastic bags wrapped around and around in the background. Hunched over with grey hair he said.

“The saddest day in a man’s life is when he thinks he can do it on his own.”
When I returned a superintendent at work asked me the most profound thing that has happened in Africa….. 70 years of discretion fell on deaf ears, how utterly tragic.

Their motto is “And this shall pass too.” Referring to principals that will leave schools for their tyranny is unsurpassed. Another is “It is my way or the highway.” Proverbial said by most principals and superintendents, too utterly scared to face their own demons, themselves, those that lean solely to use them as climbing limbs. This district sees differences as threating.
A week later I was asked in to this same man’s office.

I wanted to know if he was man enough to tell me the truth……when we met for my review for an advancement. God has graced me or cursed me with the gift of discernment. I already knew that he, would never hire me. I prayed while he found minuscule comments to speak about..... He asked why how excited I was? Without taking my eyes from his I said, “My work for God is not done.” He knew then that I knew that there was no job.
When our chief of staff left there was a reception and I congratulated the same man on his speech.

His exact words were, “Thanks…..and good luck with your future career.”
As if I needed his permission to move forth….. this wearing scales he remained blind.

I learned more about him in those few words than a life time of his good intensions.
He has stood before me speechless at numerous engagements. It is not I that has lost years of advancement it those that he has misused of God’s….and those can’t be supplanted.

Looking for Wonderful

I wrote a list of five main projects I wanted to complete while taking a year away from teaching. What I have learned is the order of what I had suspected would constitute my daily hours has changed. Grasshopper is learning to listen. …………………the rest of this blog should be blank yet the cocoons still needs to be unveiled butterfly has sprung new wings.

The internal search for peace took me to church, I mean literally to church. I wake with anticipation of darkness to suppress racing thoughts. Pray until my mind is bursting with lists and walk along hard packed paths unwinding. Reflection, presence, contemplation, deliberation are taking me on wild adventures. People ask for obvious trips…..those less drug induced……and without a plane, train, or automobile don’t register on the sex, violence, and Nazi scale. I’ve gone further in 6 months, clocked more mileage a

Forgiveness of myself has increased. Making conscious choices to reach out at every chance to those I didn’t heed, that didn’t transmit. Beating down demons that 30 years of routine have ingrained memory is hard to recall. I have speeded up to slow down. Prototypes are my friend. Listening records stories. Observing humans for their gifts, only their gifts, leaving pain for those in search. Finding truth when asked what I am most proud of. Not any accolades what others have shown me of themselves, their vulnerability to risk all has soared my gratitude and brought me to my knees.

Asking others who they are, what their passionate about when no one else is around, listening to the pause……then pure delight in someone truly being interested in who they are. No letters, no cards, simply joy.

Blinded by fear, hearing voices that push creativity into the recesses of graves are fading. They were the norm for a time and now free there are days I allow my mind to ruminate at how entombed I’d become.

Appreciation is what allows me to live each like it is the last.

My father frail in body said, “With the time I have left I want people to know I am open to them” I recall my grandmother telling me she was ready to go. My father cried in my arms for hours. Now here he is knowing there are more years behind than ahead, the raw exposure calms me before my head can truly grasp the loss of hearing his voice daily. I record our conversations.

Wisdom throws laughter in the heat of a moment drawing sagaciousness from still waters.

The silence that surrounds me shrouds me to hear what is truly there.