December 31, 2016 - Faith

Now the deep sleep begins in earnest.  The thick white blanket has been pulled over all of life, like a veil across a temple opening.  We know there is a mystery hidden deeply within the holy chamber, but we cannot see it.  There are no signs of life.  The silence of death is comforting.

Hidden.

There is only one thing left now:  Faith.  Faith is the belief in something which cannot be seen, and it gives us evidence of unseen things as surely as if they stood before us.  It is the knowledge that everything coming into our world comes from the unmanifest, and that consciousness is the one true origin of reality.  Faith gives flesh, if persisted in, to those things for which we secretly hope.

Hope is the prayer.  Faith is the deliverer.

December 24, 2016 - Climbing the Mountain

I’m not sure how long I’ve been climbing the mountain.  A long time.  I’m told I’ve been climbing the mountain my whole life, but I’m not sure.  There was always another step to take, and so I took it, step by step.  Sometimes I lost my way, but I knew the general direction was up, so I kept on going.  Eventually, I’d find the next stair going upward, and I’d resume the climb.  Most of the time I didn’t even think about climbing.  I barely even thought of the mountain at all, let alone climbing it.  I just kept taking steps, and somehow I climbed the mountain. 

And now that I’m up at the top, I’m bitter.  At least, I think I am, but I’m not sure.  Bereft is more like it, and I’m angry that I didn’t pay more attention to the climb.  At the top of the mountain, I’m all alone.  There’s no one else to congratulate me on making the climb.  There’s no one else to commiserate with, no company for misery.  And it’s cold, too.  The wind doesn’t whistle, it howls.  No, it shrieks.  Sometimes I swear someone is screaming in agony behind me, but when I turn around, it’s just the terrible wind mocking me.  Or maybe it’s me.

There's a light at the top.

The barren branches of the trees go click-click-click back and forth as the wind hurtles through them.  They grasp and snap and beat at each other—click-click-click--and lower down the trunk, great groans and moans can be heard emanating from the foundation.  Like wizened old men, the trees groan and sigh as they are forced to move.  I feel the exhaustion and pain in my own legs as well.

The sun hasn’t shone for days.  It died a while ago when the ice came.  It was weak and the ice killed it.  Oddly enough, when the sun left, so did the water.  It could have been the other way around, but it doesn’t matter because now everything is dead.  The snow is cold, the wind is harsh, and everything that once lived is now entombed in sheets of frozen ice.  Like old wavy and bubbly glass, the windows into what’s beneath show only darkness.

Is this it, then?  Is this all there is?  It’s too much to bear, too much to think of.  It’s frightening how nothing can be so much more than something, and so much heavier, too.  So I just lie down then, a few feet from the top.  The gift at the end is nowhere to be found.  Wasn’t there supposed to be a gift?  I have nothing to show.  My accounts are as empty as my hands.  I close my eyes.

“But you are not listening,” comes a voice on the wind.  There’s no need to lift my head or open my eyes because I know no one is there.

“You are not paying attention to the beauty around you.  You are thinking too much about the scales of man and the weight of gold.  You are thinking too much about conflict and espionage, about outwitting your enemy, about betrayal, about loss.  You are thinking too much about the power of man and not at all about the power of alchemy,” says the disembodied voice.

I open my eyes and no one is there, as I knew all along.  I’m just a few yards from the top, and there’s a light somewhere up there.  But if I go to the top and find nothing, no gift at the end, the last bit of my heart will finally crack.  No.  I’m going down again.  I’m going back to the beginning.  I’m going to resume the climb.  What’s a half a century, give or take a decade or so?  I’ve got time.

Back down I go, and like the magic of a wormhole, I find myself at the bottom again in what seems like just a few minutes.  There’s a gazebo on a frozen and snow-covered lawn, and on this makeshift stage are several dancers, dancing to a Christmas jig.  The dancers’ noses are bright red from the cold, but they are smiling and laughing.  Click-click-click go their shoes, back and forth on the frozen stage.

There’s a crowd cheering them on and laughing, and there are many kinds of drinks being passed around.  Half of the people are laughing quite loudly, and they’re quite inebriated as well.  There are cheers and laughter, hoots and hollers, and a few drunken squabbles and shouts.  Altogether it is a raucous din and howl, but no one seems to mind and most people are smiling and laughing.  Click-click-click goes the dancers’ shoes, and the band plays on.

I wander over to a fire pit.  It’s warm there and the smoke smells good.  Someone good-naturedly presses a drink into my hand, and so I drink it.  Now I am even warmer.  The fire is so bright as the old tree trunks burn in it, and I find myself smiling.  How strange to be smiling after being so miserable such a short time ago.

All around the fire pit, the snow and ice melts and water drips freely here and there.  It runs down little avenues that have formed on the frozen lawn, like little rivers in a sunlit valley.  I tell myself that there’s something about the water I should probably remember, but try though I may, I cannot think of it.  So I forget about it and move closer to the fire.  And now I am laughing and shouting too and drinking more than I should, and click-click-click go the dancers’ shoes.  The crowd moans and groans and howls and laughs.

I’m not sure where the first step up the mountain is from here, but I’ll find it eventually.  I’m not in a hurry just now.  Tomorrow will be different.

December 18, 2016 - The King is Dead

The artist paints himself sitting alone at a table, looking into the distance for the person who will not join him.  This is the time he must face alone, at last.  Around him is only the cold and snow.  The table is empty and the glass of wine was finished a long time ago.  The colors on his old palette have all faded and dried and turned to grey.  But still he lingers, waiting.  Soon a fussy waitress will come by and ask him if he has had enough, and he will tell her that he has had quite enough, that he has had more than enough.

To the end, then.

Too much, in fact.  How did he get here?  Slowly and painfully, he remembers the steps in life he took.  Step by step he brought himself to the place where he is now.  He has no one to thank or blame but himself.  Retracing his footsteps would be pointless at this stage.  The time for that is long since over.  Now he must face what we all must face at the end as we look back one last time at our footsteps in the cold snow.

There is a perfect accounting system, and he pays his debt down to the last penny, which it turns out, is the very last penny he has.  And now that he is poor and has nothing else to give, he gains his freedom.  But at such a price.  Who would have guessed that the only way to have everything was to have absolutely nothing?

The year crawls to an agonizing close.  It is cold.  The days are short and the nights are very, very long.  The year climbs drunkenly to the end, teetering this way and that.  It’s too humiliating to watch.  To the top of the hill, then, he tells himself.  Just to the top of the hill and no further.  Then I will lie down.

The King is dead.  Long live the King.