Perspectives

When I think about the past it gets fuzzy; people, places, things, they all loose something; the thing that made them real at the time. I've never been good at remembering; anything from my childhood dreams to what I ate for breakfast. But looking back, seeing all of it in a big pot of mixed, melancholy memories I wonder...what did it all mean? Why was it? I guess I'm someone whose prone to regretting things (maybe that's why I can't remember them so well, a sort of mental override or something). But when I look back at all that has passed in my life, I feel like I should be able to feel some sort of pattern to it, some mode or theme or gesture of reality, but I don't. I see a boy, seemingly timeless, living, breathing, making choices that he often doesn't understand. A boy with a love for learning and a love for the whys of the world. I've always been a thinker. Thoughts about science, thoughts about people, thoughts about God, about anything that interested me, I wanted to know why, why is it that I ask? What was once, I think, a hobby, is now a raging passion in me. Why can preachers wear suits when Jesus wore rags? Why can people spend their money and lives in pursuit of what a beggar has? Why can I listen and hear all the screams around me and remain so unaffected? The pain of this world is heavy. I feel as though I have taken on some of that weight. I breathe and it is as though I breathe with a million other souls. The rhythm of a world beating as I respirate; with clogging, sickening sounds of a heart diseased. But yet my spirit is light and my mouth always with a song; expressing pain, joy, confusion, and peace. Why do I crest these hills of human suffering, in a mind, only to see a valley of ignorance and pain. Sometimes I wish I could show people what I see, but then, I wonder if such is right. Give us this day our daily bread, a sustenance for a soul weighed heavy with sorrow, let it's power soak up what we have left in our path, greasy pangs of hunger for what we cannot express. Why does soul long for what mind tells cannot be had? When you look into their faces, you see the face of a nameless race that toils for survival and not principle. The face of one is the face of millions, bleeding from a heart diseased and strained. It breaks your heart to see theirs and morbidity tries to take hold. When you're eating lunch in an airport somewhere; you see her...you see him. Without dignity, without shame, without food, and without peace. You want to give them something, but only justify, to refill, to give them the dignity you think what you have... has given you. But what do they really see? A person filled with encrypted philosophies, so deep and willful, you think they can't be seen. I will give you rest, from a racked brain, in-justifiable ideas about a world that doesn't exist, time that you thought was your own, place...where you thought you belonged. God, you say, must I be poor to see? No, He says, you must be rich with promise, grace, compassion, love...while your pockets will be empty, your heart will be full, a peace that security cannot bring, a relationship with every suffering man and woman through a relationship with He who gives all and embraces a broken world.