The Glow Melts Fast

It seems like the basics, struggling over the basics, never goes away. After one of those blessed but brief periods of light in my mind, in my soul, I am contemplating the basics, love, humility. Over the weekend I had some joy, some peace, some faith, and some love, like a feast, like manna falling from heaven, like bright beautiful snow, clean and breathtaking. And all these words are trite, so inadequate, so over used, so over burdened with other meaning. But nonetheless the moment of light has past, twilight and shadow return. It always does. But I can look back at that short glow, pick up the memory of it, rub it with my fingers, and look for cleavage lines where it breaks apart.

Yesterday I was sitting in church in the midst of the glow that had been rising for a day and night. I could feel the pillar of light on my head and my hands were hot and tingling with the power of the spirit moving. I looked over at the "friend" who sat down next to me. He is really an acquaintance, and I have struggled a bit with him, with the creepy factor. Some people just have that creepy factor. And I actually think he is a fine peaceful fellow, but for me, he's seemed a bit creepy. He did ask out my girlfriend a couple of times, that didn't help, and he didn't mesh with her either. But yesterday, he looked different. Yesterday he sat close enough to be within the glow I had. I took a shine to him. And since I usually get the creepy thing, I noticed how odd it was that he seemed just fine to me in that moment, so fine that I loved him. Not the "move into my house and make babies on me" kind of love, but I loved him. It was a quiet "you are just fine, and I am just fine beside you" kind of love that doesn't need to go anywhere, or do anything, or get anything, or make anyone feel any response at all. It was so powerful that the spirit rose up my hands, my cadaverously cold hands, the spirit made them hot and flowing with energy. The energy was so much I had to pour it out into someone, right there in church with the preacher preaching stories about Icelandic hildefolk and Georgia teenagers. I leaned over to my momentarily beloved friend and asked, "May I put my hand on you here," on his shoulder. He nodded and I did. The heat and energy flowed into him. I imagined he could feel the healing power. Later he said he appreciated how warm it felt, and I guess that is all, maybe he even thought I was a bit creepy. But for that moment it was a fine thing for me to love this acquaintance as I had not before and it was enough for me.

So I think about how little I have loved in this lifetime of seeking love. Even my blessed babies came to me cloud of postpartum depression so intense I had to seek help for fear of hurting them, how they howled and never would go away. But in time it passed and for twenty years I have loved them more than anything, anyone else in the world. But still even with them, there are so few of those moments of loving with complete peace, with a total willingness to be, to just abide with the beloved. I am rent apart by passion and requirement, by reciprocity and planning. There is no peace in that busy noising feign at loving. So how did I get to be this age, with this history of "lovers" and find that when love visits she is a beautiful stranger, I do not know her name and I have no wine suitable for her lips? I recall my mother and her mother and her mother, whom I knew even into adulthood. They weren't very good at it either I think, at least not so it showed anyway (forgive me). One grandmother in particular I think really struggled for love, especially to get it, but even to see it, to do it, to give it, to be it, practicing hard, a pharisee of loving. And I know Jesus gives big credit for trying. But I'd like to get it, I mean really "get it."

I think it is the craving, that damned craving, that is cleavage line where it breaks apart in my hands. When I carry around some long list of what I want and think I need, when I hold up the cardboard image of expectation comparing it with every face, when I push forward my cardboard placard of the self I'd like for you see as me, well, then, the little baby loves are ground under foot. I bite my hands and pull my hair while they cry.

Craving, I want so much. I want....well my list probably looks something like yours, especially if you have breathtaking sex near the top. And even when I get that, it seems all the effort and drama is just to take me to those moments of afterglow. It's the glow, that is what I am really after. And I got Glow, all weekend, in moment after moment with strangers and friends and aquaintances. It came, like snow, bright and clean on everything, making it all so breathtakingly beautiful, a world shining, shining.

Though it melts fast I remember. I remember.