“Dwell”

I had been given one task and I have been coming to him for 2000 days now to try to complete it.

I decide to visit him in the morning this time when his mind and body are fresh. It is in the morning that he is most hopeful, with good intentions for his day. This morning he is dressed all in white and he reflects the sunlight coming through the windows of his favorite room. As soon as I appear, he speaks:

“From this day forward, I will live a life without strife, envy, lust, hatred, anger, cruelness, selfishness, drunkenness and jealousy.  I will earn my way into grace.”

The Promise.  He believes in it at this moment, but in a blink of his eye, he will disappoint himself when his mind wanders to grotesque beauty which he will long to possess.  Or he will start down a path of admiration for another that will turn sharply into a envious dagger he wishes to throw.  The Promise is always where they start, and restart, and start again, thinking they have the power to live up to it.  Which none of them do.

I leave without words this day, but not before I see the look in his eyes, a mashing of determination and hope.  I want to tell him that he will fail but he will not believe me.  He must live the crushing disappointment that his desire to do what is good cannot be fulfilled.

The next morning I return and I see him in his familiar place, but today he is dressed in black pants, a black shirt and black shoes and socks.  His face is decorated in war paint, and his brow, his eyes and especially his mouth convey a different message:

“I have made a home for you, one that contains a history and future of meaning.  Yet each day you refuse to dwell in me, so today I offer you one last chance.  Stay and fill me, and I will allow you to work through me for the benefit of others.  But if you leave today, I will become a powerful force for Evil and all the good I am capable of will go untapped forever.”

The Threat – I am to be coerced by it and succumb as a result of my realization that his potential is so mountainous, I must stay with him in order to benefit the world through him.   He does not realize that I am an ocean and he is a cup. He would quench his thirst with me and then forsake me until he is parched again.

I leave him silently again, but he shouts protests and obscenities as I drift away.

On the next morning, he is camouflaged and hard to pick out in the room but I know he is there.  He circles me and takes measure of me for several moments, but I just wait patiently for him to speak, which he eventually does:

“I am hiding from the world because my sorrow for all I have done is so great.  I have left so many saddened, hurting and in despair in my life, and I can’t make amends. I can’t fix my past, I can only hide from it, and the hiding now becomes my present and future.  It is loss, but nothing can be done.”

And now, the Trick – the next desperate attempt to get me to act.  The Trick would have me believe that he is truly remorseful and has no hope or idea that I hold his answer.  He hopes that an ego-inflating act would get me to stay and fill him with all I am.  I pity him in this moment, but I will neither stay nor act.  As I leave, he lunges from his hiddenness to try to snare me, but I am a vapor.

I melt away from him again and prepare myself for tomorrow.

That next morning, he is back and quite resplendent in his emerald green attire.  From the moment he sees me, he begins speaking, but I struggle to hear so I move in closer, closer than I have been to him before.  He looks right and then left before he continues:

“…so many people look up to me and listen to what I say. I’m sure that with the right words from me, they would turn to you and live the kind of life you want them to. Yes, I can be a real asset to you if you’d just stay here and work with me.  What do you say?”

Yes – the Bribe.  He follows the pattern of so many who convince themselves that I will choose to dwell with them if only they find the thing that I desire most.  His words invite me, but with his thoughts and his actions, he rejects me.  He is a desert, but I still live to save him.

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5000 days later he wakes…

I might as well get up – I’m not getting back to sleep anyway.    But I’m so tired, tired of the slow trek of each day from hope to hopelessness.  Why will today be any different?  I have asked and no one has answered my questions, so why try again? Why start something I can’t finish? Do people pick up a book intending to read half of it?  Do they walk part of the way to their destination and then turn around?  Would they put away their tools when half their house is built?  I’ve tried over and over to harness the good inside me and I can’t.

Still and silent, I lie in bed and tears trickle over my cheeks down to my pillow.  I am not in control.  I want to do what is right but I can’t.  I am unclothed.

In that moment, Good appears.  Like before it is light, but it was distant and always beyond my reach.  Today it appears directly over me in bed and it glows with a radiance so beautiful I feel hope in its presence.  Then slowly, waves of warmth emanate from it and pass over me until the tension of my body is lost and I am relaxed, so relaxed that my exhaustion nearly overtakes me.

And then Good speaks: “His grace is sufficient.  His power is made perfect in your weakness.  And even though I cannot dwell with you, he will if you ask Him.”