The Was and the Is

January 30

The Was and the Is

The Silent Scream that existed as a placeholder for my G-d was incomprehensible to me.  I entered AA and was informed that understanding my Higher Power was required not just some far distant goal.  In true alcoholic form my first move was to shun G-d.  This made room for my rage which was in much need of the space.  After a few fine years of dissipation I lost interest in incendiary devices no matter how large their detonation capacity.  Having cleared the room I brought in G-d as potted plant.  I talked to it occasionally, watered and fed it, mostly ignored it.  Growing in spite of lacking ministrations G-d was an unobtrusive force living in the corner changing gas into air and demanding nothing.  As I quelled my apprehension and lived with the Presence I looked, listened, probed and questioned the subtle Force sharing the room. “Add it up,” chanted the children in my ear, “run the numbers, settle the accounts.”  I calculated proofs and discarded the faulty and inaccurate.  What was left, the whole, not the remainder was mine to keep, but it was not everything.  I haven’t an everything G-d, because I am not a nothing person.  I am something and G-d is something too.  We are complimentary, like pairs of angles who come full circle.

Show the sun the souls of your feet

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TRUST

You can trust people to be who they are.
I am a different being in relationship to different people.
To some I am the center of their constellation,
The sun burning bright, I 'm all they can see.

To others I am the moon,
Orbiting them, silent and dedicated.
With another group, I am a comet streaking through the sky,
Seldom seen but well remembered.

For many I am a distant star.
One among the multitude, blending in the night with the other signs.
Then there are the folks who see me in a more down to earth way,
I am the dirt beneath their feet.

The farmer sees me as a plant to be tended.
The cowboys view me as a horse to be broken.
To fisherman I'm a catch.
I am what people want to see.

So what can I trust them to be?
Wrapped in their own worlds
Yes, mostly I guess,
None of my business in the end.

I watch them and learn what I want to do, who I want to be.
In large part by avoiding what I see them do.
I do trust people to serve as bad examples, often
And good ones infrequently.