Tag: eternity

Much More Than #24

January 28, 2020 / Tom

Kobe Bryant. A star athlete. A hero to many. A legend.

I don’t want to get into the minutia of hero worship or the frailties of a boy made rich and famous before manhood. There are many challenges we all face as we mature, but few of us have to do so under the spotlight. Even fewer of us have to do so under the intense pressure of performing for wealth and adoration. We make our mistakes and, hopefully, learn from them without much in the way of fanfare or notoriety.

Today, I just want to focus on a Dad and his daughter, a man with a girl he surely loved more than life. That is, after all, what truly matters.

I won’t pretend I can’t imagine what they went through. I believe I can. It makes me sad that such a loss had to happen in such a way. Yet, as I see grief on the faces of fans and athletes, this tragedy allows me to realize that great love exists. It exists even among the famous, the wealthy, the legends.

Because at the core of all the accolades, he was just a Dad with his little girl, a man with his legacy.

Tears

I have often felt waves of sadness roll over me as I contemplate my end. There is no fear of death in me but there is a sense of sadness. I want to experience all of life with those I love, and the thought of missing some of those things saddens me. I don’t want to miss a thing.

My children, if all goes according to plan, will carry on without me. Sometimes, as it so happened with #24, our plans as parents vanish in an instant. That’s the part I can’t, or won’t, imagine. It’s a horror needs to quickly vanish from my mind. I need to die before my children.

That is when the tears come. I think about Kobe, sitting next to his little girl on that helicopter, experiencing the horrible realization that nothing was going according to his plan. Not only was he going to die but so was his child. I can feel his impossible fear fighting his need to comfort his daughter. Waves of desperation poor over me as I sense his need for survival mixing with his desire to protect his baby girl. In my mind he fights his desire to tighten his restraints with his need to undo them just to hold her tightly.

I can hear screams mixing with “I love you”, fear mixing with love, and helplessness mixing with the desire to survive. It is quickly overwhelming.

So that’s where I stop. The intensity of pain mixed with the focus of a Dad’s need to protect his children proves too much. I can’t take it any further. It threatens the idea I have of my own plan, and leaves me realizing just how little control I have. I say a mantra, wipe the tears and shatter my shell, determined to live. I still don’t want to miss a thing and I know, deep inside, that fear does nothing but cause me to miss things.

The Legacy

I’m not a die hard basketball fan. I knew of Kobe because I grew up not far from where he grew up. I knew of him because of his childhood basketball exploits and the controversy he created locally by deciding to jump right from high school into the NBA.

It turns out he knew what he was doing and he trusted his instincts in doing it. Good man.

The death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, as well as everyone on board that helicopter, comes with a legacy outside of sports legend. It offers us a moment where great numbers of people can reflect on who they are at the same time while mourning the loss of someone they cared about. Hopefully, it also gives us all a chance to reflect on the things we haven’t lost and the opportunities we still have to embrace those things in gratitude.

Kobe Bryant’s death is not just about the loss of a legend. It’s an opportunity for parents to contemplate their own mortality and their own relationship they have with their loved ones, particularly their children. We often miss those opportunities as we swirl in our life’s distractions, but they are vital to experiencing life fully in our moment. Our moment that is so unexpectedly fleeting.

Woman

December 10, 2019 / Tom

Mother

I can hear your voice echoing through my caverns,

I can feel your rage building like a storm,

I can see your smile, rare and unforgiving,

I know all I am through your eyes.

I am your son.

Sister

I can hear your cries seeping through the darkness,

I can feel your mind twisting in the wind,

I can see your smile, longing for reality,

I know I am forgotten through the temper of your lies.

I am your brother.

Lover

I can hear your heart beating in my silence,

I can feel your soul afraid in being open,

I can see your smile raising me from my ashes,

I know I am alive through the desire of your embrace.

I am your partner.

Daughter

I can hear your first cries as though they sang but yesterday,

I can feel your hand as it grasps at my one finger,

I can see your life unfolding before my eyes,

I know I have done something right when you simply call me “Dad”.

I am your father.

Woman

There are many things that have shaped me,

That have pulled a sculpture from the roughest, burdened stone,

I’ve been hewn by heaven and hell’s sweet majesty,

A woman’s touch is the discourse of this living.

I can rise, and I can love, and I can be all I’m meant to be.

I am a man.

The Door to Eternity

December 5, 2019 / Tom

I felt she was ready. For all the clinging of those who loved her, she needed to leave. It was her time, and when the door opened she looked back, smiled, and passed through the threshold.

Behind her was the anguish of her humanity, in front was something more. Before the door had closed she paused to glimpse one last time as the path that was. She saw the joys of her life planted neatly along the way, and relived the laughter and the smiles and the intimate moments where love had swaddled her soul. She also saw the pains, the suffering, the anguish and the rush of fear that being human had created. In joy she was so mindless yet in fear the mind was all she had.

The look back, it seems, is something all souls do. When they look back at their lives most know it is time to move on. Those who are not ready, though few they be, they return to their humanity to be celebrated for their unpreparedness. Yet that door is something we shall all see, and it is something we shall all pass through. She was ready to pass through before she had actually seen it. She had felt it before she saw it, and it’s pull began to build as her pain increased.

As she reached the end of her humanity she recognized something. While her body was wracked with pain, her heart had jumped for joy. As she neared that door she ceased being completely human and became a part of her divinity. At the end she was ready to let go of being human and open the door. It was time.

She felt the tears of those she loved and the pain of those who wished she’d stay. This was, finally, her journey alone and she could no longer submit to the whims of others. Her soul called for home, her heart begged for love, her humanity desperately wanted to know its divinity. And so, with a final view of the forest she had planted, he closed the door and walked into eternity.

There would be sadness left behind, but joy would return. That’s the thing about both, the return in our human experience with equal vigor. Yet, what lies on the other side of that door leaves one of those behind.

You

November 13, 2019 / Tom

I see you.

I see that wonderful mix of courage and fear, and I marvel at your intricacies. I see the way you rise to the challenge of your own mind, and how you answer the call that is born deep within. I see the way you care, the way your heart spills out over the canvas of your life. I love how you leave you brushstrokes all over the place, and how I can touch the lines you’ve left on my soul. I see you, my artist, my muse, my living love.

I wonder about you.

I wonder about the Divine magic that made you, and the wonderful truth you’ve been born to be. I wonder what good I must have done to have you cross over into my life, and though I never can quite tell what it was I know I’d do it all over again just for the chance to kiss you. I think about the tears I’ve shed in utter darkness, and wonder which one watered the flower whose fragrance now fills my soul. I wonder about you, my love, and how you were born within me before I even knew I was alive.

I know you.

I know the bumps on my skin raised in the thought of you; Braille from my soul the Angels wrote with hope when sky burned with fire. I know the truth of your name whispered in the very beat of my heart, a promise of life eternal beyond the mortality of one man’s mind. I know you from lives past, those vestiges of things left behind but never quite forgotten. I know you as surely as I breathe, and I know you as a certainty gifted to a man not quite deserving of the honor.

I love you.

I love you along the clear creeks I see in solitude, and in the deep snow I fight alone to touch the depths of Nature’s breast. I love you in the songs that birth tears in my eyes, and I love you in the smiles that come in those things that only you can do. I love you in our sweet embrace that pulls us past our moments of hellish uncertainty, and in the shudders of unholy fear that come in its wake. I love you in the throes of ecstasy that beg me to love you more and in the truth that this man was made for you, and you were made for me.

It’s you I see who has showed me the way to the sweetest summit. It’s you that’s given me the pause to wonder, to find the Sun in the darkest skies and love beyond my eyes held shut. It’s you I know who’s pulled me from the whirlpool of my mind into the center of my heart. It’s you I love. You are the destination of my soul.

The Risen Man

October 18, 2019 / Tom

When the Phoenix rises above the ash, he has no desire to return. That’s how the Phoenix knows he has risen, when the cocoon of ash and ember no longer hold any appeal. He may tell the story of destruction, of death, of rebirth and of resurrection but only the living part of that tale is his. What came before his rebirth fails to matter. What matters is he lives and rises to the Sun, and surrenders not to any darkness.

Until that moment when the piles of blowing ash no longer stain his mind, he is a slave to it. Until that moment when the pulsing-orange embers cease to burn his soul, he can only focus on the pain. Until that moment when his fisted hand rises into the mountain air, he will be buried beneath the surface of his agony. He will say words like “healing” and “growth” but he will mean none of it. A seedling may seek the sapling, but until he pushes through the soil his is but a hope, an egg in which no bird can fly.

The seedling cannot bloom to share its fragrance with the wind, and the egg cannot sour among the breezes of this life. Born in the nest of ash and ember he is but a promise, a dot of potential to which no truth can be assigned. Yet, with some battles and some defeats he finds his true victory. He stirs to crack the surface of his ashen shell, punches through the shell that once imprisoned him, and feels the clean air for the first time. Once risen, he cannot fall even when he falters before his god. He can only fly. He can only soar. He can only live his truth.

Once that breath of life fills his chest there is no death in which to surrender. The body may surrender but the soul that burst him through the ash will live eternal. He will leave his footprints in the mud and, sometimes, drops of blood upon the soil that guides him in his travels, but he will not die. Those who knew him will hear his song ring out from within the forest veils. They will feel him in the drops of dew that wash their tired feet. They will know him in their own rising, and they will find him as their shackles fall to the ground. Their name will be his, and his will be theirs, and they will forever be bound in the life that births their quest, and the quest that births their life.

Return to the hell that burned him is impossible. He never gives that thought a moment of attention. It becomes like a subtle whisper in the woods, one you know is there but cannot be truly heard. He is healed, truly, remarkably, and with that wisdom in his heart he turns to face the wind, smiles, and takes to the flight he was born to take.

To Find You (A Poem)

April 4, 2019 / Tom

The fish has never said to the sea,
“How is it that I exist with you?
How have we found ourselves together,
You within me, me within you?”

The cardinal has never said to the sky,
“How is it that I embrace you?
How have we found ourselves together,
You surrounding me, me inhaling you?”

Like this, my soul has never said to you,
“How is it that I have found you?
How have we found ourselves together,
You loving me, me loving you?”

We know the answer, you and I,
We wrote it on our page long ago,
Before the first breaths of our infancy,
In a journal left for us at Heaven’s door.

We used to meander about some desert plains,
The salty taste of a kiss an oasis unto itself,
We used to gather wildflowers at the base of a great mountain,
Dancing in the fragrance until the Moon touched our skin.

We used to gaze from the seat of a high summit,
Dreaming of the sea,
We used to bathe in the depths of love’s great ocean,
Talking about one day climbing that mountain over there.

Things we’ve done before this lifetime,
And things we’ve seen since the day we first drew breath,
Have carved steps in the stone to take us to those great heights,
And have taught us to swim in the pool of life, where we have found each other again.

May I never again question the beauty of what we are,
And may you soon not fear the handholds and footholds
In the rockface that gets you to me,
For we were born to know the truth, to live the truth, to be the truth.

For I know now what I knew way back then,
That should I not awaken to kiss your lips again,
I have lived, and will live again,
To find you.