Taking It Personally . . . (we were having breakfast with a young friend)
From a journal entry after the breakfast. . . . the Teacher speaks . . . Your justification of man at the breakfast table yesterday proved a point. The mate said that Jacob was not what you thought him to be. And you had said that you could only take your frame of reference and apply it to other people. And if you endowed them with the highest and best that you knew and the depth, then that was not such a bad thing to do. If you generalized in such a manner then you indeed endowed them. The young friend was surprised and his eyebrows shot up. A nice gesture. You are familiar with it.
You justified all men and hoped that someone would be around for your justification when you needed it. Will you need to be justified? You think all men do. But will you? Have you done to the best of your ability what you know to do? Have you swept every corner of your mind? Is there that which yet must be brushed clean?
Only you will know this in the days to come. Only you will know it when you are pressed by emotions still to be filtered. You think what yet?
Only what is ours to choose. And if you choose nothing more, nothing more is required.
It is not an easy route you have chosen to do. Nor is it one that most would find themselves on. You take it all and then apply it to yourself. You are said to take it all personally. And personally is the only way to process information for any meaning to be applied. It must be personal. It must be meant for you. If it is not personal, you are a passer through. . .
From The Beginning. . .
Except in the quiet of the night
when the demons plague
the early hours and the babies
cannot sleep that the pleadings
are ignored.
It is when the ghosts trip the light
and hide beneath the covers with
the bodies that sweat. And shake
and rattle the headboards. . .
It is when the praying begins and
the begging does not stop.
You know that as well as I. . .
We have heard it since
the beginning of time.
And advantages taken and innocents
pay to assuage the egos that cry
for their mamas. What to do. . . what to do?
The fathers will not leave their warm beds
to hug their sons and lay waste
to their fears. And tell them that the love
they left will always be there for them,
for the fathers do not know.
They still cry for the warm arms
they know and the pain does not let up.
One day every inlet of the sea
and in every cove of the dunes
beside the sea we will see that life
is fair and sweet and good.
And in every imaginable
hiding place life will prosper
as it was meant to from the beginning.