He Woke Up At Home With Nowhere To Go

Here's a trip report from a dusty journey that ended when the road finally turned into hiring on.

Lent is coming up, a time for emptiness.

Maybe a time for keeping in mind and in prayer millions of folks full of emptiness that doesn't seem to come to an end.


He woke up at home with nowhere to go.

Gazed hard
Past his door and his coffee at table,
Just him.
His jam.
One knife and his toast.

He was out of sight.
Winged by, what, who knew.
How distant was kingdom commerce and those slicing the slivers giving all the others
Today's daily bread.
He’s one in a million, a million times eight,
Eight million men: builders, sellers, sailors and soldiers, coders, free lance poets even, all shunned in a hyper networked age
Plugged to the moment
The instant grid stooped
Thumbing, fingering, plugging away.

His kid wonders
How's Dad doing?
And worries,
Dad okay?
He need any money?
Yeah, his kid's one in a million, a million times eight.

He’d tire of questions.

And this one he’d hate
"So, what do you do?"
He’d struggle, strain, stress
Stunned.
Answer the question!

What ought, he thought, I do?

Numb there's no health plan.
So skip your meds.
Though he’d traipse to his buried medicine chests to clear his head.

You ever wonder
When You're fifty four?
Why you’d rise each morning and start in reverse, backed down the drive
Your head full-of-steam running from home and from yourself, for the good life?
Why, after all you did,
Astonishing You
You raised yourself dead.
You ever recognize at first how you expected so much; then how you have no skills to suffer must sufferings,
Shattered shortfalls to your so many hoped fors?

His garden's out back
Unweeded
Shrouded by wood.
It's shaded black back there and a long way away.
Those who have been once
Tell him of a well.
A sacred place.
To journey he knew he must go only
Alone
To be near its water and near its space.
Its questions drip drops
Deep. They don't go away.

"What do you seek?"

"What makes you sad?"

"What have you received?"

He found in his well
Poverty down deep.
As in the words Merton once wrote: "Poverty is a success."
He now knew what he knew when he said "God lives in his emptiness like an affliction."

Here he reverenced the Is,
Shushed, unsure, scared of its Grace,
Some Grace.
Whatever it is.

As the day spends itself
He saw or might not
The Tender who's never finished work, clearing his land,
Gently bringing life, hope, a shake of abundance.

He’d go to bed tonight
Cold.
Aching for rest for the morrow
When he’d wake up at home,

Yes, home.

Nowhere to go.


--tim


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It's Lent Again

Almost.

FRIDAYS POST is starting early this year.

For the same reasons posted back in 2010.

Have a good one.

We'll return in April.


--tim

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A book idea: Love, Your Mother

Affliction

The mystic Thomas Merton was born one day this past week in 1915 (Jan 31).

He once said,

God lives in my emptiness like an affliction.

Three penetrating words from the monk there.

God. Emptiness. Affliction.

This is February, the month when Lent begins, a great period for prayer.

Words of the monk to pray for the season ahead,

Afflict me, God, emptiness.


--tim



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a book idea: Love, Your Mother