the winds of community and the myriad ways in which they blow

Summer is hardly here and already our flowers have wilted and died. The promises of spring have faded into memory, and we are left here in the same desert places that we knew in the first place. I suppose I was sinful in my hopefulness. It may well stand true that it is, in the end, too much to expect anything of anyone; I don’t really know. I have come to a place where my peace is no longer dependant on these things. The days pass like anything else, the nights seem to grow longer and longer, and I am just floating through all of this much like the ghost I have always tried to be.

Though the evidence seems to suggest that I am less dead than before; I am learning to embrace the dark moments as easily as I drink in the lighter ones. It is all becoming part of the same unbroken line. Perhaps this all means that the ghost has been put to rest, that my passage has been arrested for a time and I can just exist in peace with whatever God sees fit to send my way. I am still hurt by the indifference of others, I still grieve over the losses we have been experiencing, and I am still unsure about what any of it means; but somehow I can see that our deaths do not define us in a negative way, but only exist in order to deepen our compassion, to teach us how to love and be loved in spite of everything.

Outside these barren walls that we have constructed, here in this desert place, may we find what life remains and celebrate it. May we come from our distant solitary sojourns and meet at the table that will always wait for us, well-laid and vibrant with the fullness of what we most need.