There’s the man who waits in line at the coffee shop and
rocks back and forth on his feet ever so slightly as he stands at attention
with a faraway and haunted look in his eyes.
He squeezes his fist over the dollar bills in his hand and his breathing
is shallow. The muscle in his jaw
tightens and releases as he grinds his teeth together and releases them,
remembering for a moment where he is until he forgets again and his face goes
pale and the grinding continues. He is
not sick, but he is dying just the same.
Every day he dies a little more.
I see the pieces of his soul all around him. They lay on the dirty floor of the coffee
shop, and people walk all over them as if they are nothing at all, as if they
are garbage…. Nothing but God incarnate
lying in the gutter as the empty people laugh and walk by. And I want to walk up to him so badly! I want to walk up and say, “Excuse me,
sir! Is this your soul lying on the
ground in pieces? Please, let me help
you pick it up.” Please….so that I might
be able to forget about my own soul, just for a moment.
But I do not say it to him. I cannot.
If I did, he would run away in fear at having been discovered to be
human. Then his soul would be left on
the filthy floor, and the filthy people would kick it back and forth like an
old can on the street. He would have to
return later in the dark of the night and pick the sooty pieces up and pretend
they were beautiful and that he loved them.
“How beautiful you are, my love!” said King Solomon. “My beloved is to me like a cluster of henna
blossoms.” Or a soul in pieces on the
floor of a coffee shop.
And anyway, you cannot touch the raw elements of another
person’s soul without their permission.
The penalty is too great. He who
goes into that light comes not forth again.
It is death to touch the mysteries unprepared. So I leave his soul on the floor, and I try
to walk around it. But the nagging
thought stays: If I help, I could redeem
myself, make myself worthy again.
We all know it isn’t just him, though. They are everywhere. Maybe you are one of them? One of the people with a splintered
soul? There was a time when souls were
regularly examined and cared for and healed and loved and put in a special
place befitting their station. We all
knew it. We all did it. And when we found the occasional broken soul,
we rallied together and fixed it as best as we could. Not anymore.
Something somewhere has broken.
Maine’s November ghosts haunt me deeply now as the days
turn grey and cold. The mirror on the
pond beckons. “Mirror, mirror on the
wall. Who is the fairest of them all?” I don’t dare look. I might see my own soul in pieces as well,
and I don’t want an answer because then I would have to act on it. Maybe the mirror would tell me to go back and
find the man in the coffee shop with the broken soul. Or the woman in the supermarket. Or the nurse at the doctor’s office…. All of them bleeding sanguine soul light onto
the unswept floors.
The November Witch laughs, but still there is hope. She does not know Who comes at the solstice,
and I can wait. I can carry my own
pieces until then. It is not too great a
burden to bear. And while I cannot pick up the pieces of my fellow man’s soul, I can still offer him a simple
smile. A smile that fills. And let me tell you if you do not already
know (but I am certain you do), you never know just how empty and bereft your
soul is until it is filled by someone else.
Something has happened in this world, and it’s high time
we undo it. If you have gotten this far
in this article, you know what I am talking about. Put down the electronic devices, just for a
few minutes. Examine your soul. Allow your fellow man to experience his pain
in silent comfort instead of an agonizing and macabre display crushed into the
ground by your own boots. Give him a
hand. Smile. Please.
We don’t have to keep doing this dark thing. We can return.
