3.07.2006

so spring. what a beautiful surprise.
i finally feel this burst of joy i've been waiting for as i sit here, listening to the rain outside my window. and as i walk back a few minutes ago, completely enraptured by the beauty of the tree silhouettes against the orange chicago sky, allowing the rain-drops to sting my face, i realize i am finally feeling again... no longer numb and apathetic, no longer waking up every morning feeling miserable. and somehow i remember that i love life again and i can trust God to bring me when He wants, even if it is in His time (and His watch is always so slow compared to my own). and so maybe i can wait and enjoy the days i have instead of worrying that He has abandoned me, laughing at my situation from His place because i suppose He does love me and perhaps He does think i am beautiful and i can just be me and that is enough.

for...
i am put together with stardust and good blood and fine genes, with the continuous urgings and tender pushes from ancestors and old friends and even the newly departed - loved ones, every one.
i have a strong body, carved out of ebony and jurassic amber, bronze and hard iron. my eyes are cut from diamonds. my hair is woven from the cattails of the blue nile and my eyelashes are the feathers of the great heron and my blood is the juice of pomegranates and my muscles are the haunches of the leopard and my joints are the knees of mountain goats and the elbows of elephants and my feet are onyx, planted solid on a rock, or sometimes eagle's wings, lifting me up, up, up to soar and dip and fly.
i smell like the earth and like the sweat of a fertile bride waiting for her virile groom and like all the flowers that ever bloomed and ever will bloom again and again. my heart is generous, so filled with forgiveness and hope that i can sing to children and shelter old women and hold old men in my arms and wipe away the regrets in their tears.
i can swim the mediterranean sea and scale mckinley and badille and kilimanjaro and aconcagua, and i can ride st. mary's glacier from her icy heights , across blue valleys as wide as rivers, and dip gracefully into the mouths of green lakes and call the trout and the rock bass and the wallete, and hear their words when they answer...
i am stronger than a sepik crocodile, more cunning than gideon's three hundred, more powerful than david's five stones, brighter than the thunderbolts of zeus.
i can change lives, resolve injustice, reverse poverty, inspire hearts and minds, connect kindred souls. i can make laughter and inspire singing, persuade lovers to find each other, strangers to make friends, and enemies to make peace. i can move mountains.
i will thus now, emboldened with the spirit of the ages preach the good news to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, teach deliverance to the captives, recover sight to the blind, and set at liberty those that are bruised and defeated.
i can even tame a lion, snare it and pin it on its back and hold it down, until its bravado is quieted, its heavy breathing not even a whisper, its roar only soft breathing - more quiet than a hummingbird waiting to fly, softer than dew.
every morning i wash the sky and sing the clouds aloft.
then i drink in the sunshine and i glow...
beauty above me, beauty below me, beauty to the left of me, beauty to the right of me, beauty before me. i am, like the navajo, on the pollen path.
i know these things because i have the knowledge of the ages at my right hand and the wisdom of the universe at my left hand. and peace flows in me like a deep, blue river that i mount like a stallion and ride and ride into the everlasting.

p. 214-217, Patricia Raybon, My First White Friend

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