Maybe I should go back to that spot where healing is supposed to take place. Or maybe the special dirt that I collected did not take. Maybe I need to grab another sample from the blessed Earth behind the church in old El Chimayo or pray more, like I did that afternoon in the old chapel where I watched an old woman weep and her son wheel her chair to the nearest candle.
Maybe . . .
Maybe the answers I sought were not the answers I prayed for. Or maybe my requests were denied for reasons that did not present themselves until now.
Maybe I wasted my energy praying for a miracle that would otherwise be something impossible.
But then again, this is the thing about miracles.
Miracles have nothing to do with logic because a miracle is when the impossible happens and like the first light when early morning changes the sky; miracles come along to destroy the darkness and defy the impossible.
I try . . .
I want to defy the impossible.
I want to make my request again and should the answer be unwanted, then I will try again tomorrow until there is no more tomorrows, from now until my death.
Ah, you.
Ah, you my higher power and source of all goodness.
Ah, you, my love and my rock and my redeemer.
You, my soul and my tempted and lost and perhaps tortured soul.
You are my everything and I am nothing, except a tiny glimpse and a soul in a sea of billions.
I am no better nor worse and I am not stronger nor weaker than I was this time last year.
I am not better. I am not smarter but yes, I am more aware because I have been advised that despite my sentiments and regardless of my emotions; there are times when separations are too wide to reconnect.
There are times when life as it is becomes too irreparable and thus, we are too hurt or too tired to fight back or to stand up and regain our previous composure.
Oh, Mother
Oh, Father
Oh, Blessed one
Oh, Mother of Mercy and Father Time.
Maybe I need something different now.
Maybe the sentiments and the ideas of redemption are too much to bring me to my so-called moment of resurrection and therefore, perhaps I am damned and condemned or too far gone.
Or maybe . . .
Maybe I am simply unforgiven in the sense that insanity is my absence of reasonable concepts to which I am otherwise crazy. And yes.
Yes, of course.
Yes. Absolutely.
I am crazy.
I confess.
I am insane
I have always been insane
And I will always be insane
Then again, aren’t we all insane?
Or if not, perhaps we are safely insane, at least in our own way.
Take me then.
Let me go.
Set me free.
Let me head back to that place where the sinners and the sick go to seek healing and find shelter in the graciousness of faith based healing. Let me arrive and confess with my heart and my motu and let me find the kind of redemption that solves the riddles of the mind and eases the upheavals in the heart.
It is morning here in the downtown side of Purgatory. There are no remnants of yesterday or proof that yesterday existed,. There is nothing left, with the exception of me and my thoughts, which are burdened and buried in old memories that weigh too much and refuse to give way.
Am I too crazy?
Am I so hopeless to believe that me as I am can be at peace?
Can I be that person?
Perhaps this is too much . . .
I am helplessly and hopelessly still engaged and loving like the swells in a wild sea that refuse to settle. And I do refuse.
I refuse to settle.
I will not give in at all
At least, not until my waves reach her shores . . .
And then?
Then what?
What about me?
What about you?
What about us?
Or if there ever will be an us or if there ever was an “us,” in the sense that we are an “us” as in “together,” for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in good health, then what about my heart or my dreams or what about the pain which I held like a dagger that caused me to bleed?
I am as I am, which means I am as I have been built or created and regardless of what took place, regardless of my past, regardless of the traumas or the battles or the fatigue and the wounds, which run deeper than the ocean itself; regardless of all, I am still here.
I am begging and yearning to tempt fate and shake the cages of my place, here in the Financial district in Purgatory.
And yes, I ask to “Give us, this day, our daily bread,” and yet I cannot say that I have not been led away from temptation nor can I say that I have been delivered from evil – for Thine is the Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory, forever and ever (amen) but I am the lost prisoner, missing in the prison cells of an ongoing tragedy.
I am just a man.
Small at times.
Pitiful at others.
But nevertheless, I am here
Above all else
I am here
Eager
Willing
And looking to fight the Devil for all he has taken.
Help me, God.
I have not been moral and nor am I any favorite and nor do I have the right to claim progress or perfection.
But wait . . .
I have to believe in the fact that I still decide to show up . . .
I still have love . . .
And to me, whether the dirt from the church at El Chimayo healed me or not – no matter what, I dared it all and lost everything; and still, I managed to show up today
And that, my Lord
Has to mean something
Or, at least
so I hope
As it was in the beginning
is now
and will be forever
The Lord is with you
And always
with your spirit
