the silence is shattered- looking into the eyes of the graying

the silence speaks volumes

the gray is something inside you, not really an exterior feature. i have seen gray-eyes, there is a certain void in them. an oncologist, a psychologist – whatever the label- needs no tests to prove what the mind can gather from a fraction of a glance in the right direction. when a hope is lost, another cracked plate crumbles, falls to the floor. the silence mutters, the silence matters. but the silence is shattered.

i once built a monstrosity out of lego bricks and flew them around on a pie plate in the living room. i was a child, and i thought freedom existed in more planes than what i was told in school. the horizons glowed golden, burnished bronze, burned in hues no earthly name could decipher…and did not decay, and did not gray. there was no gray world, no gray mind. no “i cannot do that today or any day.” the gray was safely buried inside the dimmed eyes of those who had precious little left. i was not one of them, nor would I ever reach their shore.

but the world would like to sandwich you into that place, at a certain age. if it was hazy, i could understand. but it isn’t. it is not subtle. there is a time when you find a stare means something much less than it did the day before, the week before, or even the month before. lines were never mentioned in a list of wonderful things, and the more gravity pulls, the more likely the world turns away. i have seen the sad faces of the lost and few, the bitter and withdrawn, the ones settling into the gray. it doesn’t frighten me as much as anger me. and the silence is shattered.

it wasn’t so long ago i had more faith in machines, and even men and women. the kind who greet you in the morning, pass by you at the grocery, wave hello as you drive past. but i am noticing fewer, as my days grow. fewer and fewer. and even some of them have gone gray in their twenties- gray in heart, gray in mind; a world nailed shut into a box without hope. something is wrong with their prayers…they are not verbal, not even gestured anymore.

it is not for me to say i will not pass this way again…or any way. nor to sense the weight of sadness that runs like seeping tears from the face of the aging. i remain awake,  and my days a scribbling yet. no chapter end, no intermission, no annotation in another’s playground.

no matter what comes, love continues, faith continues, and even hope. for without hope, there is nothing. no passion for even breathing. i have seen too many crawl their way in the alleyways of gray, to huddle in the evening of another spent-out warm decay. and i wonder…how so many dim the lights until nothing moves them, not even the breeze that comes to kiss them goodnight.

the silence is shattered, but i will look to the one who gives peace in the silence…and go on another night, knowing that there is more than what is inside their box, inside their game, and i will live it to the fullest, until  the wind of God brings me home again.

flowers dying before their days are done

three people i knew died recently- two younger than me, one a year older. one woman i remember as a teenager, the thin little girl with coal black eyes, a few years behind me in school- vibrant, vivacious, the very picture of youth…yet now dead way before her 50th birthday.

i thought about it, turning one way, then another, wrapping myself like an burrito in the blankets. sleep eventually came, more like an echo of rest than a deep drink of peace…as grey slipped through my kitchen curtains.

…and morning came yet again, and a new day dawned for the living…

but a few days have passed, and in their passing, i am even more steadfast now than ever to live life as deliberately as possible. because it occurs to me that the three people i knew who died did not seem to have that spark about them…and i find myself still slightly amazed that such people could waste so much, so many moments on mundane thinking, mundane loving, and mundane passion.

why think about trivial things that will burn? why concentrate on what does not encourage one who is down, does not save the one who is lost, and does not give life to the heart within you?

why love with a shadow, instead of a whole? why withhold the very essence of what caused God to create us in the first place- a love so beyond understanding in this realm that it still remains a partial mystery?

when i look at living with passion, it is that which comes from selfless love and compassion- viewing life with a mind’s eye that every moment is precious and all are priceless. but – if we do not have this within, what good are we to those around us?

and how could we reflect the glorious love of God, who, going against his own nature, offered a way to have a right relationship forever with His created, living that passionate life here and beyond…the ultimate love?

so it is with a more sober heart i reflect on the recent deaths of three i have known. three, not one. dying like a flower before their time…dying from a lack of nutrients and the water of life….because each of them publicly lived a life that did not reflect the love of God.