Sunday Meditation #1: Mystery And The Man

I am not a religious man, although sometimes I wish I could say that was true.  This tug, this pull that I feel in my heart some days, where I marvel at the beauty of the world and wonder if it really is the grace of God speaking mutely to my soul.  Such wonder!  Such mystery!  And I do not say that lightly.  The skeptic in me that so often rears his suspicious face fights hard with the naive innocent that still exists somewhere in my heart.  But I try.  I try so hard to cast off the jaundice induced by a world that so often seems bent it putting everyone through the fire or on the anvil, to hammer out of us the juices of life.  Were that this not so!  It appears to be, however, and the task for the jaded such as myself, and perhaps the innocents who still believe, is to maintain that sense of wonder that makes the world so fresh and new.

I cannot pretend to be a child any longer.  The number of summers that have passed since I could lay claim to the moniker far outnumbers the summers I actually spent as a child.  The weary adult in me is wistful, perhaps, for that refreshing lack of affection. Or perhaps for the bright, sharp edges of my soul that used to be, now ground down by the grit blown in the winds of time.  It is enough to make one want to run and hide, should one feel overrun by the vagaries of this kaleidoscope trip we call life.

Enough.  Enough of the slightly sour melancholy of the "grown-up".  I have wisdom now, but that does not mean I can no longer enjoy the sound of crickets or the syrupy lassitude of a cat sleeping in a warm spot on the neighbor's porch.  These things had their origins in something mysterious, whether God or the accidents of physics.  Some day I may kneel before an altar and declare myself open to a Creator.  Until then, it is enough to sit in a chair on the porch, breathe the perfumed air of the evening and know that I am whole in the world.