As Worthy a Traveler as Jonah

In a way even reading is a form of breaking faith but then one has to risk infidelity in order to meet the Lord. Ten thousand regrets are my wedding party now - I could wash a glass city with my tears. Night after night sprigs of dried lilac appear in my dreams attended by choruses of unseen birds. For the life of me I don't understand this peace nor why it should have been offered to so unloyal and trite a suitor but here we are. The honeymoon suite, the bridal chamber, the threshing floor.  Meeting his widow at the transfer station one leans into offering condolences even though we are collectively moving away now from treating death as more than a simple transaction. If you are here to be perfect then you are in the wrong place but if you are here to love, then love and let the rain fall where the rain falls, am I right? When the old ones talked about light, I think they knew from candles and lamps, don't you? What a poverty we become when we are fixed on our own becoming. This summer let's go back to the lake we camped at in 1994 and swim again at midnight listening to loons in the moonlight. Who says I don't remember how to worship? Marriage is a stone on which two strangers carve their names then throw as far into the sea as they can. Once you understand all distance is a mirage, then Job becomes as worthy a traveler as Jonah. How lonely I am yet how grateful! How wide the door opens when you no longer insist on seeing it only as an entrance or an exit.