Refractions

Where do you start, with the shadow or the sun? Is one better, or do they need each other like YHWH and the Adversary locked in something like love, something like hate,  but like nothing so cold a thing  as indifference? Is there a whole story without loss, without betrayal that follows desire, that tracks what makes you alive, what makes me alive, though far from perfect or right? Do we really believe that the frantic hunger of humans can so distort the dream of God that it fails?   Please say, “No.” So as we wait for what they call “the fullness of time”, we ask, Can we trust? Can you trust me? Can I trust you? and perhaps, to break  (or make)  the deal  (or the heart), Can you trust you,  and can I trust me? So. The question that haunts our hearts.

How did you trust the life of one just born, and let that be what makes you end with hope? How did you know the moment,  how did you recognize this advent as strong enough to bear the weight  of your own failing, falling life? Were you visited by light, enough light for a whole world, and did it come from those two eyes, seeing you so brightly against the gloom of age? Is what you sawso clearly,  through dim eyes and temple smoke the not-so-distant moment when this baby’s arms will carry you home?

Do you ever, on the first day of September, as you walk into the wind,  warm from exertion, feel the freshness of the breeze bathe you with cool? Do you turn left at the corner, feel  the warmth of sun on your back and notice the light has changed, is somehow thinner –   do you think to yourself, “Ahhh, I’d forgotten that”? Do you mostly forget  what winter days feel like until yours are the first footsteps in the snow in the park, and you see what early light can do with all that whiteness and the long shadows of trees? And does the smell of mud blossoming out of melting snow,  still, somehow, surprise you, though you’ve known it every year since who knows when? – and does thin ice  on shallow puddles seem like grace  as you break it with your boot heel? Do you smell ozone one summer afternoon after rain has settled the dust  on the street of a prairie town,  a scent forgotten, now remembered, now familiar? Do you still, sometimes, pull on a damp bathing suit  and shiver? Is your life