Much To learn

Today is s my birthdayoday so here goes.

Much To Learn

I saw it in a dream today, and so I share it with you now. So often in life we look to sages to tell us the meaning of things. We read books to enrich our knowledge of the world, or for the  sheer enjoyment of a good story. The point is to decide what it is we're looking for, a direction or something to enhance the experience of living itself.

We turn to education when we're young  to teach us the lessons we need to help us navigate our surroundings. We learn the basics of a rudimentary alphabet, a set of numbers on a line. We absorb the common elements of time, and space in order to orient ourselves to the meaning behind the stars, and the depths of the ocean at our feet. The rest of our lives is spent applying all of this stored information to establish an individual philosophy that we can live by; a creed if you will. Until such time, chum, chum.

That's what the sage in my dream passed on to me as he reclined at table with his faithful wife. We formed our sacred circle within the walls of a sacred space where there were so many people gathered in so many similar places doing the same thing in different languages in every corner. And all the while I heard him say “Is there a consensus?”

I saw sailors mourning beside a lawn, tears wiping upon their shoulders in symbolic tribute to comrades lost at sea. I saw families gathered also in remembrance. I saw the toil of labor, and disgust of tending the vineyard, and yet I found a final destination was not in wasted effort, but in patient reasoning of what I thought too difficult to ponder or preach. I could find a way to succeed! “Chum,chum.”

And then I knew a way in life was meant for struggles. For indeed until we figure it out there is much to learn. The final lesson is don't sorry about the process, it's the journey that counts, and what we learn along the way. So let our lessons teach us. Let those formal years be placed firmly between our ears, and let love resound from the deepest recesses of our hearts!

We must all learn at our own pace, and in our own time, but to think that each must come to a separate conclusion in our own unique way is folly. It all points in the same direction just as the compass rose to North every single time we make a turn in life. It is the map we must orient to true North, and not the tools we choose to get there that matter most.

Amen, and God bless.

D.A. Wittler 7/24/18

The Break

The Break

Six years ago today the world began to change. I never knew that turning fifty would be so traumatic, but it was. She told me so many times before it felt like two strangers living in the same space, but I wasn't listening.  Another job had come, and gone, another year of struggling to make ends meet, yet my heart was still wandering without direction. Then came a defining moment to make me realize I wasn't invincible any more.

Funny how your body tells you so when a bone gets broken, like an arm on a trail in the middle of nowhere. You feel so vulnerable at the mercy of time, and circumstance. Oh, but the break to come was so much more painful. I would have preferred the path to a blissful ending where no one gets hurt, but what I got was a gut wrenching reality check that sent me reeling into a pit of self pity looking up from the bottom with two choices to either live, or die. Well, I'm still here so it must mean karma is real, or God has a plan for every shattered dream, every romance gone sour. It must mean we return to fix the relationships we leave behind, or die living a lie that we tell ourselves will go away if we ignore them long enough.

But I couldn't live the lie any more, and so the breaking of two hearts began another journey backwards in time instead of moving forward. Funny how the break is sometimes what we need to heal our wounded souls. It remains a paradox in time until another moment comes along to tell us we can still live a dream if only we will it so, and God finally tells us he's listening through the voice of another human being. And all we need to do is listen once again instead of beating a drum inside our head that says we're not good enough. You are, I am so let us give life another go around, not like a merry-go-round where nothing changes as we spin, but everything emerges new again in light of love, and second chances.

Amen

D.A. Wittler 7/18/18