Things are going very well. I am suspicious: perhaps it is going a little too well, methinks. These things I am working on — after much cultivation, they have the appearance that they will soon bear fruit — bear great fruit — and I know not what is to come in these my vicissitudes, but I find myself somewhat afraid. Perhaps it is nothing, a foreboding of a success that is not to come in any day near, if it ever is to come at all. But it could be something, after all, and I am not that young a man anymore, to whom such grand actualizations would be mere delightful consumables to his ego. I have done my share of suffering, my share of shying away from the world, and my persona is not as ready to take on the world. In me, I do want these things, I think, to be real ascertainments — but I am taking it easy, of late, for that desire is fraught with consequence. I know not the future, but this present is sweet enough as it is; let me enjoy what there is to enjoy, take it as it comes. It may all be nothing. Whatever may be. Today is a good day.

Dreams are good, but then… I have never danced in a dream.

A. G. Rizzoli: 1st Anniversary

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Door in the Sky

A door in the sky opened,
and through it, light poured down
upon the waking world.
And the world saw things
that had always been there, only
never before had the eyes
been able to see, as if
a great darkness had lifted, as if
all things had been created
anew, as if time had ended
and begun again. I was there,
I remember how the
known was strange, and I
carefully wandered through
neighborhoods I had
walked through all my life, yet
now, it was all adventure,
all as if the distance
between every last thing were erased.
And I remember when
the door closed, and
everyone wondered, not a minute
later, if they had dreamed
the whole of the experience,
afraid to ask each other
what they had seen,
for fear that it had never happened
at all, or had only happened
to them alone, a private
glimpse of Heaven
no one else would understand.
Yes, I was there, and I
remember it, and I think
there are others who do, too:
a light once shined
in the world, and nothing
we are, nothing we do,
nothing we think or speak, none
will ever be the same again.

I have dreams that drive me, even when I wish not to be so inspired. It is so that I have been told: if your dreams don’t degenerate (almost immediately) into hard work, they are merely convenient illusions. You’d never get there if you never actually started going. If you bear the path long enough, you begin to understand what it means for one to have a commitment to something. Something noble and good — that is the purpose of life, is it not? To quest for the Holy Grail, to have a destiny that one would call a destiny, a calling that is not merely one’s desire? Yes, I tire along the way, but I never stopped being human, and am capable only of very finite things. So I must chip away, etch my place in the world. Not everyone has a dream, and I should count my lucky stars, especially in the wee hours of the night, struggling with my ideas, knowing I’ll have to wake up early for that wage job I still have to have. Yes, it is luck, I must tell myself, however much it resembles this hard, lonely work….

To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God’s care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.

Time brings us along, whether we want to go there or not.
So kicking and screaming, but straight into the future you do go.
To live in the past is like dreaming, but then, without the hope.

We look crazed, don’t we, we Christians? As if the picture of us is that one with the wild look in his eye, the Believer, who thinks that there is not but one absolute morality (his), everything being a sin if the Bible does not expressly permit it, who wants your children to learn that God created the world in six days (and ban the mere concept that evolution could possibly happen), and basically wants to convert the world according to the fundamental church doctrine. Oh, yes, and who thinks that the Harry Potter series of books promotes literal witchcraft. I know there’s more, but that’s the sketch of things, is it not? And yet, when one looks at the figures, one finds that he of us who holds himself so morally high is nothing but words — his divorce rate, his charitable giving, his potential for criminality is the same or worse than those who hold not that Christ is the Lord, who saith nothing of how one is to be if he would be saved.

Thus, the image of one crazed fits us to some degree, one who speaks as if he were riding on a cloud and sees not the mud it is in which he wallows. We forget that we are sinners, first and foremost, that any of us, all of us fall short of the glory. The best of us is no better than any of them. It is easy to forget that. For however many saints we have, there are just as many of ones just as holy in other faiths. Easy to overlook that one, too. We forget what it is that we truly have going for us, we Christians. It is not the quality of moral character. Nope. All we have is Christ Himself. Whereas the founders of the other faiths told us that they were not gods, Jesus said that before anything was, “I am”. That He did not fall short of the glory. Maybe it is that we need to remember that speaking much and doing little (and being little) is one of the main things He was against. We don’t want to be crazed. We want to be real.

It is not to say that we do not need to declare Him to the world, for He left us with that charge, but that we need to do it in vastly different terms than we have been. Perhaps we should remember the words of St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words when necessary.” Be and do, first. Show, don’t tell. Speak as if knowing we are sinners, who should be grateful for any opportunity. Because we are.

brisk chill, and wonder
awake may yet be stillness
mid-air, a snowflake

A. G. Rizzoli: The Shaft of Ascension

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Life can be so distracting — if you don’t watch out, you might find yourself enjoying it.

The miracle is to feel, to know, that one is loved, when no one else is around. The miracle is when the memory of someone long gone wraps you in a waking dream — so clear, the vision, their words so present. The miracle is how the world of man persists, when all of us surely will die along the way, that something shared can prosper so, in an almost infinite way. The miracle was the day you were born, when something so new and unique was called into being, something never before seen, and which will never been seen again. The miracle is to understand something of another’s soul, the little things that stay with you — blessings handed you in casual passing. The miracle is to see with eyes that sight such miracles, and to deposit these little visions in your memories, to spend on some rainy day when the visibility drops, and nothing around you is clear.

I’m certain the planets will align for me, at some time; but I wonder if it will be destiny bending over backward to spin me a trivial fate. Not that I should complain — for I have food and drink aplenty, entertainment ready whenever I want, a roof over my head, and my health — and that’s better than (I believe) the majority of the world. Yes, I must thank God for this abundance, but this little niggling sense I cannot rid myself of it: that I will be incredibly lucky about some really minor thing, and that whatever sum of luck is allotted for my person’s total of kismet will then be exhausted when it comes to anything of real importance. Alas, nothing I can do…. There’s a lesson here, somewhere, because there always is when I go on about anything. But I’m too busy complaining, I guess, to try and pry it free from the unsorted mass. (And perhaps that could be the important thing I’ll be missing out on? Life’s funny like that.)

Love can move mountains — but only with our help.

Pharisee Eyes

Is it a blessing or a curse?
I may incline myself:
to look out through Pharisee eyes,
to see the world
like the bad guys do, to see
their point of view,
to understand why evil does as it does:
I walk a step or two
in their shoes, all I will allow myself,
but I can see their point.
Like I said, I don’t walk
the full mile, even, for I am afraid —
I desire not that I embrace
that way of looking at things.
Yes, o evil ones, I see why,
but I must (even if I must force it)
see things differently.
You may have a point, but
in the final analysis, that pointing
directs nowhere; there, I admit,
but for the grace of God
go I, that I could mayhap
have held that view of things,
but however I can choose,
even when I am inundated by the brunt
of the reasoning of sin, I must
grope my way after saints,
fumble my way to salvation — and
seeing through those wayward eyes,
perhaps I may yet learn
to love my enemies,
my darkest foes: for I understand
just a little of what you are,
just enough to know
that you have feelings, too.

What I desire has never been made, at least, not by the hand of man.

What I desire I have dreamed of, and forgotten, a thousand times.

What I desire, no one else has wanted this way; none else is me.

What I desire at times weightier than all the gold in the world.

What I desire is sometimes lighter than a feather in a fantasy.

What I desire, strangely, I can often get — ask, and I receive.

What I desire is not so important: rather, what can I give?

In this thick hour, there is a jest and a feint that goes unnoticed by the world. And the heroes of meaning — they have trouble comprehending each other, and sometimes, their own selves — they lack anything of magic. So we may find, in our own little world, that what we have dreamed — even if it comes to pass — we never seem to gain what we really are looking for, the point: the wordless yearning that has been with us ever since we learned how to wonder, which we ask reflexively, not even realizing that we do. One wonders why. The jest: it is merely a question; and the feint: our answer to it all. We believe there are everyday heroics that are surely remembered by the God of the littlest sparrow fall — and we question why it all must be like this, and answer because it must be so. We ask and ask, for the answer we conjure in our lack of the proper wizardry never answers anything. There was, though, one hero of meaning that seemed to have something, but something so simple, it so easily slips from our grasp: to love, it has always been an impossible thing, but we find we do it anyway.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired, although not in the hour or in the measure, or the very thing which they ask; yet they will obtain something greater and more glorious than they had dared to ask.