The storm swept through the small city, leveling everything - whole neighborhoods, schools, businesses, shops - everything. The children were running, crying and looking for their parents. The parents were looking for their children. The foreboding dark sky slowly gave way to blue skies and sunshine revealing the wreckage from a few hours earlier.
The old man stood where once was a busy city street corner, at which a 150-year-old church still stood, having suffered only superficial damage. Across the street was the office building he had once worked in as an architect, where so many of his urban planning ideas were born, where he built a community team to address many of the issues the city then saw rising, like the flood waters that now threaten what's left of the city. Only a few upper windows were broken. This part of Ohio is famous for its cresting rivers and sudden downpours, but this area had never seen a twister like this one, ever before - well not in his 85 years, anyway.
Eric, now with a cane, slowly walked back behind the old church toward the path that led to the enclosed water garden that he had often enjoyed throughout his life, often with his beloved and beautiful late wife, sometimes with their daughters and once with the two grandsons. It was a magical place where time stood still, a mystical garden, where if you listened carefully you might hear angels singing in the cool evening breezes and catch fairies dancing on the rippling waters of the creek that ran through it, delicately glistening in the moonlight.
After retirement, he and his wife, Cheryl, moved into the apartments in the building adjacent to the old church, which had once been a convent. Later he converted it into low income apartments for some of the homeless he often noticed lingering outside the church while he ate lunch on the park bench. It has been a long time since those days. Lately, he's been content reading, doing some writing of his own, and still running the refugee house he and his wife started about 25 years ago. He still cooks for the kids in that place. He loves the smell of the ethnic food they taught him how to cook.
But, this storm with its rapid tempestuous fury that rose up out of the northwest and blew down almost every recognizable distinguishing feature of the old city stirred his soul somewhere else. He walked slower these days, but his mind and heart still sought wisdom and insight from the unseen world, a world he could sometimes feel in the sweet air lingering in that garden and those sudden time warps when he would slip into another realm of mind space, encounter a space and time of such bliss, of such pure joy that tears streaked down his now aging face, pooling in his glistening blue eyes.
"Are you unhurt?" he heard a young police officer call to him as he walked carefully down the dead end toward the path into the garden.
"Not a bruise on this old man," he called back bravely laughing, as he asked, "Any casualties?"
"Nope. I'm surprised. People are all fine. A few cats are missing," the officer joked back, "but you know stray cats always come back. They know where they're fed."
"Yep," Eric replied, remembering many hot summer nights when he and Cheryl searched for one cat or another that went missing chasing fireflies and rabbits.
Oh, where did those nights go? They'd drink wine, and wait out on the old porch for that damn Bitzey to come home. One time she came home and left a litter of kittens. It was in those whispy moments, in the time they spent together, talking, drinking the merlot, and watching the moon, listening to the tree frogs and crickets chriping into the night, that their love grew deeper. It was in those moments when they waited that time stood still and together they entered into a place of such beauty, and longing, and hope and joy. They could have spent a hundred years on that old porch.
Oh, where did those nights go? They'd drink wine, and wait out on the old porch for that damn Bitzey to come home. One time she came home and left a litter of kittens. It was in those whispy moments, in the time they spent together, talking, drinking the merlot, and watching the moon, listening to the tree frogs and crickets chriping into the night, that their love grew deeper. It was in those moments when they waited that time stood still and together they entered into a place of such beauty, and longing, and hope and joy. They could have spent a hundred years on that old porch.
"The cat always comes home. Indeed. The cat always comes home," he muttered to the police officer who now was responding to a call on his radio and turned to get in the patrol car.
"Well, now we rebuild, but the storm will bring out either the best in us or the worst in us. The worst storm of all will be in how the people react to each other. Will they come together in love and charity and help each other, or will they resort to looting and violence?," he wondered.
"When these kinds of things happen we are always given the gift of challenge to see who we really are. What kind of a person am I, are we together?" he thought, rhetorically, as if he were rehearsing his talk for the church meeting later that evening. The church council had asked him to talk to the large number of people they anticipated. The church hall would be full of blankets and sleeping bags and a weary, yet captive, gathering of displaced people and families.
"Inside our hearts, our souls, our very beings is a calm, a beautiful stillness that breathes peace and joy, even bliss - an awesome ecstatic bliss - really that is undisturbed by anything going on around you, outside you," he thought.
"When we are centered there, like being centered in that gentle mystical garden, we are eternal and gentle and kind and loving - we are love itself - and nothing can touch us, nothing can take that away."
He wondered if sometimes these storms come to help us clean up our lives, both inner and outer.
Eric stepped around the old red and white barrier signage and found the now overgown path back to his sacred site. He heard the heron calling to him, the tall branches of the big tree were remarkably unbroken - a few branches were down, but those would only serve to make the tree grow stronger, now trimmed of the old branches.
The ducks were splashing around in the heavy raging stream, muddied from the storm. The huge overgrowth around the garden had protected it, as had the large church and some of the older formerly church-owned buildings. He would find the old park bench, on which he and his wife had often retired on late summer afternoons after their walks. Neither of them had ever told anyone about the garden. He had once wanted to make it a public place, but they decided to keep it a secret. Whether or not anyone ever found out their secret or if they just didn't care, they didn't know or care.
In the calm after that storm, like the storms of his own life, he rested, he found peace and an indescribable joy. Peace was always there. It was and is real. Bliss is our true heritage, he thought, if only we wouldn't waste our lives trying to move the pieces on the chessboard of this illusionary play, in which we are all actors. The choice is ours to step off the stage and engage in what is real, slip out of the madness, the fury, the raging tide of the world's insanity, and enter the garden of joy. It is our choice and the more we make that choice, the easier it is to find, each time.
The sun was dancing, glowing radiantly, as Eric drank in the tranquility and eased himself into that state of perfect love, a threshold that led into realms of time and dimension, few ever really experienced, even if they knew about it theoretically.
His only wish, his only thought? There was no wish, no thought. Just being in this moment, in this joy, drinking it in, allowing it to wash over him, like a gentle summer breeze kissing your cheek and whispering in your ear how very, very loved you are.
He allowed himself to get lost in the love and knew for certain that this moment was what life was all about.
No comments:
Post a Comment