I feel the droplet manifesting in the corner of my eye, rolling down my cheek to nestle on my lip. it quivers there for a moment, and falls to the earth below.

I think about what has triggered that tear, and what has gone into making it possible. The events, thinking, feelings, and emotions that construct it. There is a whole world in that tear, it has a life encapsulated in it.

It has been growing in me for years, Why should I feel embarrassed by it. I don’t today. I welcome it. I feel my soul lightening as it falls through the air, as if it has washed my soul a little. It holds in it the pain, suffering, and anguish of myself, and others.

I cry for me, I cry for you, and the earth that my tear lands on has an opportunity to grow also.

Tears are salty. I don’t know if I have an imbalance of salt in my life, but I sure know that I can use the sweetness of the light in my life today

I hear disturbing news of your connection to this world. You have been hospitalized. You want to cut the drapes down. You mistrust the woman who you have been  married to for over 50 years.

Should I care ? I never had  a healthy connection with you anyway. Under your tutelage I found that I could not find myself, no matter where I looked. I only saw your damming shadow where ever I looked.

Ya, Ya, I know that you didn’t become my Father from a healthy place. You are a product of your time, and certainly not the only influence on my  life. Did you ever know how to show love ? I saw it only rarely.

I have worked on making peace with you, and it has borne fruit. I know that Mother loves you, and treats you with tenderness, but I have miles to go. You are alone now. Perhaps that is where my empathy can come from. I know when I was crouched on that floor in LA saying ” I am so alone ” that I have never felt such pain.

Feeling alone, and bewildered is a place that I can relate too. I hope that I get one more chance to tell you that I love you.

Perhaps I can feel it more than the last time.

I wonder what people think when they see me standing in one spot looking into the sky ?

Do they wonder if I am watching for a plane, a bird, or a UFO. Do they wonder if I am afflicted, or paralysed, looking into the sky.

I am going into the blue. My home. I feel that connection every time. My life before was a bewildering thing. I was so physically close to others, yet had no idea how to be with you in life.

Today I look into the infinite blue, and it reminds me of you. I see infinity in your eyes too. When I get up in the morning, before I start work, I look up into the sky, and say your name, with love. It reminds me that I am never far from you. I believe that my love spans miles, continents, and light years.

I think of you, and you are there, I love you, and you are there. In the blue. I am full when I have gone into the blue, into you.

I am broken. I feel it in my bones. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In my mind I stand shiny, and new. A gleaming thing with flashing lights. That awe’s, and is venerated by you, and me.

I grew up thinking that was what I needed to be. I learned it from others, those close and far. Please forgive me for not attaining those lofty heights. How I felt for so many years.

But you see I am broken, what a relief. I stand before you a shell of that shiny abomination. I don’t have to pretend any more. I reach inside to bring out my brokenness. I show you what I am. I lay myself open in front of you, and invite you to look.

You stare in recognition. You show me yours. They are not so different. I give my damage to you, and you to me. We stand there greater for it. I feel the peace finally seeping in.

Who knew, it is not the burnished armour that makes me strong, it is the damage inside.

I feel as though I exist in a mortar and pestle. The pestle swinging around again to pulverize another layer of my defences. to let a little more light shine out from my soul.

When that pestle comes rolling again it hurts like hell. I feel crushed and vulnerable. I know that the end result will be a place of growth, if I don’t hide.

I am used to my husk. It has been there for a long time. I have spent a lot of time layering it on, it has formed into a crust of denial that shields me from growth and expression, alike.

Now it is trying to keep me from feeling about my Father. It has been cracked enough to let the situation come in. It is the liquid of reality. It soaks in, and I can’t deny it. I wan’t to deny it. I wan’t to feel nothing, say the old man got what he deserved. Yet I can’t. I think of him in that place, all alone in his mind, and I think, that was me awhile ago.

I believe that his chance to experience growth has gone. He just suffered the slow inexorable pressure of a life filled with fear. Who am I to judge ? He lived as best as he could. Without his path I would not have my own. I know how his application of pressure formed my life. I can’t say that I am glad of it. It did get me into the spot where I had to jump into the mortar though.

For that I can be ever so grateful. I don’t think that my light would ever had a chance to shine, if not for that. I want to hold him and let the light bathe his soul.

I will miss you Dad. I never got to see your light shine very much, a few brief glimpse’s, now sunk into the past. somebody told me that God is great yesterday. I don’t know what to feel about that. I hope that when Dad goes home he will be the fullness of all that he is. He can throw off that robe of fear, and let the light shine, his compressed love radiating like a super nova.

Here comes the pestle again.

It holds me within its grip, like a vice. I often feel like play dough, pulled in all directions, comfortable in none. Some of the trauma is new and raw, some old and scarred.

At times it directs, and coerces me in ways that I can’t fathom. A picture enters my mind, of a puppet, jerking hither and fro.

I know that we all experience it, in some form, or another. It shapes us, like the wild lashings of the waves on the shore, or the insidious winds on the sand. Changing me in ways that move me in life.

What do I do ? Do I rail against it ? Do I push it away ? Do I shove it down ?  I have used all of these actions. They have left me bewildered, in a hopeless, painful state of affairs.

The action that has proven to be the most effective, albeit difficult, is the one I choose today. I look at it, I grasp it ,and I honour it. It has something to teach me. I will get angry. My tears will emerge from my sobbing chest. I will submerge for awhile, but after I have torn it apart, and grieved over it, I will come back with a capacity for love and empathy that connects me to you, and your trauma.

The way is hard, and though I sometimes walk in the shadow of the valley of death, I search for the Light of Love.  I see it when I look at you, the sky, and through the shadowy mists of pain, into me.

I had been burning for a long time. Smouldering, raging, and flickering. The flames licking the inside of my mind. I had tried to put the flames out for years. This had only led to brief periods of relief. Times when I believed that they were not there any more.

Without having water from the spirit I couldn’t put the flames out. The best I could do was to dampen them for a while. Eventually there was just a hollow shell crouched on a floor, saying ” I am so alone ”

From those ashes I hesitantly started to build. They told me I would have to go from the ground up. I reached out with words of Love to fill the void ,now empty of fear and pain. I believed them when they said to go to any lengths.

I have been building for a while now. A castle of Light. Its the hardest thing that I have ever done ! My Father was a builder and I never had any desire to follow in his footsteps, but I have become a man who wields the tools of Love.

With the tools that I had before, fear, shame, and pain, all I could do was to tear you, me and life down.

With the tools of Love I reach out. I see that I have the greatest power of all. I can hold you, I can feel you. I can give of myself. I can give Love.

I know now that I can be what I have been afraid to be. I can join my light to yours. We can join more. This time there will rise a fire of the spirit so powerful it will take me home. I work towards that day with Love shining from me the best that I can.

Ah, the Light.

Peter

Son

Brother

Husband

Employee

Supervisor

Stoner

Faggot

Skinny

Fat

Handsome

Shy

Glutton

Kraut

Racist

Kind

I have been called all of these things.These words were an attempt by myself, and others to define me, to impose structure. To put your, or my expectations into solidity.

My name has been mocked.

My name has been abused.

My name has been forgotten.

My name has been praised.

What I have finally learned is that regardless of what I have been called, what you or I believe.

I am beautiful.

My name is Love.

There is energy all around me. It floats,swirls,jets, and lays there. It comes from you, me, the air, and the ground. A rock is energy, as is a tree. The energy that comes to my mind though is the energy of Love. I think that I am confused though. How do I know that the rock is not Love ?
Love is all around me. I see the beauty of it in everything. I see the beauty of Love in the images of one person beheading another. How can you say that, you might, vehemently, ask ? Well what I have come to see is one person so damaged and afraid that he will never be loved, or to escape Love, that he has to use the most extreme thing that he can think of to feel like he belongs, or doesn’t, ( I am different ) yet Love will always be in him, no matter what he does. No matter what we feel, disgusted, shocked, appalled, about how he has tried to escape/find Love. That is truly what this person needs right now. Could I give this person that love if I was on my knees in front of him while he was holding a knife, I don’t know. That doesn’t change the fact that Love is the most powerful force in the world. I work with inmates. I see such damaged people. People who have had the light of Love extinguished from there eyes. I know that they have Love in them. We all do. Its just buried so deep under the pain that there is no sight of it. I used to be like that. My eyes were opened to the fact that I am beautiful, as we all are. My greatest, most fervent wish is that I keep looking for the Love. In myself, and others.

Pride is a complex word. It can denote so many things. I can look at the outcomes in my life and say I am proud. I can view the actions I have taken with pride. I can look in the mirror with pride at who I see there.

I can do all of these things, yet so often I didn’t . I based my perception of myself on how others saw, and acknowledged me.  After many decades of looking at myself this way it was the default to giving myself personal credit.

The last 2 years have been consumed with the task of changing the way I think and act in life. This involves me taking pride in myself for outcomes from this endeavour, pride in the actions that I have, and continue to take, and looking deep into myself and seeing the love that I have for myself, and others. I have done a remarkable job, which requires continues re-enforcement.

All that being said and done, my mother said she was proud of me yesterday, as we left to catch our flight back home.

I don’t care that this one comes from outside. I am taking it, and holding it in my heart, where it can blossom with my self worth.

I am proud of myself too.