September 30, 2014 12:10am Good evening. It’s been a long day. Facing the giant looming in my mind was easier than imagined thanks to a realization remembered. This will take some telling. As many of you who have been reading this journal for two years now may recall how lost I was in the day’s after my wife’s passing. At one point, I made 16 posts in twelve hours lamenting my lot in this life. It wasn’t a dream of my beloved Teresa that made me begin the ascent from the pit of grief and self-pity. It was a dream of biblical proportions that clarified my perspective and brought me peace. Then the dream ended with math? I saw this, (), an equation etched in my mind’s eye against the darkness of a moonless night and in a font that looked like chalk on a black board. The dream started with me sitting on the edge of the field of a legendary battle where a boy faced a giant. It was so real I tell you I can still feel the tension rippling in the air. The scent of some kind of sagebrush in the air mixed with the musk of the men in the armies on either side. I felt close enough to be killed in the imminent fighting, but I felt safe and unafraid to watch at this distance. I knew my dream had taken me to witness David take on Goliath. David’s hair was jet black and big hanging curls in a more masculine form of Shirley Temple’s style and his locks were shoulder length. It glistened in the sunlight as he separated himself from the hundreds of men behind him. He looked older than I’d imagined, but still very young, 12 – 15 if I had to put a number on it, but still, everyone behind him was older and larger. He was the smallest person on either side. The wind was in the boy’s face as he walked confidently to what seemed his impending doom. The landscape was harsh, unlike any I’ve experienced in waking moments. It seemed like there was 200 yards of desert-like ground between the armies. It was made up of sand, jagged stones of all sizes, pebble to small boulder. Then there were the skeletons of knee-high brush that appeared to have died of thirst, perishing without ever living a day of green. They crackled and crunched under the wait of the mountain of a man who strode towards the boy on the other side. This man turned and looked right at me. Eye contact brought the first thoughts of fear in my mind. I could see would have had no qualms with killing me. He looked at me like I was nothing. I’ve never felt the depths of that kind of meaninglessness in a gaze. It still makes me cower to think of that moment. He was the biggest man I’ve ever seen. Seven-foot plus, muscular, but not chiseled. He wore his brawn like a comfortable coat and there was a confidence in his gait like an undefeated heavyweight in an exhibition with a pipsqueak. Goliath turned his attention to David, who I then saw kneel and pick up a stone, just smaller than a baseball. Goliath was armored that was pocked with the dents of many blows in battle that bounced off this beast of a man. The giant stopped, pointed at David, then looked back to his men and said something I could not hear, though I was close enough to see sweat trickling down the faces of the men. Whatever Goliath said, I then heard the roar of laughter from his ranks, some literally slapping their knees. When Goliath turned back to David, clad in only some kind of brown cloth, tunic looking garment, was already twirling the stone in the sling. At that point, Goliath himself bent over in laughter, tip of his broadsword stuck in the ground like a cane as he busted a gut at the sight. David’s face was calm, focused, and no hint of humor. He was running towards Goliath, still bent over laughing like his men behind him. When David closed the distance to about 25 yards. Goliath straightened up to take his battle stance, just as he did, David released the stone from the sling. It was a blur of a projectile, flying through the air, finding it’s mark in that spot just above the bridge of the nose between the brows, which were bashed in by the force and size of the stone. It seemed stuck for a moment before falling in front of Goliath. The giant went stiff, eyes crossing, focused on the stone that caved in his face, a bloody depression where the nose and eyes meet. As the lethal rock found ground, the mighty Goliath succumbed to the pull of gravity as well. He fell backwards. It was like slow motion before Goliath fell from my line of sight, I could hear the soft thud of his contact with the ground, but the brush from my vantage point veiled the seeing of Goliath’s actual contact with the desert floor. I knew the end before it began. The expected victor was vanquished. In my dream there were no cheers from David’s army. The looked right at me like Goliath had. But with David, I felt love and encouragement. It was the polar opposite of Goliath’s gaze. In my moment with the boy who beat the giant, first time, I saw David smile. The dream went from that smile to the (). It lingered for what felt like seconds, but the change of scene was so sudden, I woke. My giant in that moment was the grief of the loss of a wife of twenty-five years, six weeks after her 48th birthday. I believe () is the stone God gave me to kill the seemingly endless pity-party raging in my mind. To me it meant that my troubles were neither greater than, nor less than anyone else God created. I was not singled out in a cosmic conspiracy against my happiness. Everyone who loves will live to suffer the same loss. In that moment, my compassion for my world grew because I was living what some have yet to experience. All the words in all the languages of every civilization to rise and fall on this planet are not enough not describe the depths of the pain when true love is lost. But I don’t need to describe it, just survive it. I am doing that and in knowing it, I found the courage to tackle the giant I faced today, covering rising racial tensions fueled by mis-information from an elected official. My calls were not returned and I did not get a face-to-face or even phone interview with him regarding remarks that were like gas on a fire. What I did do was go into the district where people put this man in office and their disdain for the rabble-rousing rhetoric was reported. I am reminded today that giants come in many forms. My sling is filled with soundbites instead of stones. The giant: The proliferation of racial division in the world I live in. My prayer is that this giant is vanquished in my lifetime. I believe in the words, One nation, under God… Let us truly be INDIVISIBLE, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you all for the love, prayers and support. () p.s. I got good doctor reports today and work was like riding a bike!
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:11:05 +0000
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