Timeless

[Continue…]

The great waters of Superior lie still at dawn.

Above on a branch

Cry, cry Mourning doves.

Love. Oh love, love.

Love. Oh love, love.

He sat with the stars for hours and poked at the embers in the pit all aglow like a face lit from the other side of the earth reaching for food from the forest …

…so I threw twigs into it nearly to falling asleep.

Of the 9 to 10 questions she had asked this was the one he pestered with presently while whittling a stick with his jackknife, his boots crossed over one another beside the fire on the 2 1/2 foot pit the county had put in with concrete and aluminum wheel rims.

Q Right up front you seem interested in what prayer is and how prayer happens. You give it a life so to speak. Could you talk about that a little?

A. Sure, I'm inviting and feeling invited to See the life of the prayer… To recognize how some of it is listening and how some of it is speaking… How visions come, where our individual thrills of the heart meet the Spirits sacred anointing for the sake of others and ourselves…

It's birthing, and prior to that one can even be drawn toward what transpired, what radiated from someplace outside oneself, choosing to make its way to an epicenter of one's essential charged existence. It comes into being. The cause is always the movement of God and we then respond. 

I sip on my coffee and check back into one of my old journals. Sure enough, here it is:

From a prayer of St. Augustine – You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet perfume. I tasted you and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I am inflamed with love of your peace…

For me, the picture of myself somehow "calling out" would only serve to illustrate how I, in that state of thought, misunderstand myself and my environment.  Nevertheless, through that calling I sometimes move myself into awareness of Loving Presence which is of course there the whole time and never leaves us.

I wanted to keep thinking about it. It bothered me greatly that she thought I should. I feel as though I am being pressed to pry open something that would otherwise remain rather sweet and private and not a "thing" to be autopsied or studied. If I chose I would think about it some more.

I will not, however, dissect what is holy to me.

For anyone. Ever.

He savored every sip of his coffee in the tin cup he brought along in his pack once purchased at Drummond Island bakery on the far east Islands of the Upper Peninsula.

He had taken the fairy there and spent most of his time with his then girlfriend Jane, bicycling and tenting all throughout northern Michigan and Ontario during their two summers together.

I finished the last of my coffee and made my way over to the pack where I got eggs and butter and other things gathered to cook some breakfast. I threw a few pieces of kindling on the still smoldering ashes and watched them light up like another little miracle out of nowhere. I put the cast-iron skillet right on top of the coals, let some butter sizzle for a second and through five eggs into it and scrambled them up nice. I threw a can of hash into the other hot pan beside it and kept a lid on to keep the pine ashes from floating in.

I was thirsty after the Jamison from the night before so guzzled one cold orange juice and sat there listening to the chitters and cheeps of the Finch and Cardinals. There were no blowers blowing or lawnmowers running. All I heard was the water trickling over each of the pans as I cleaned a little bit with paper towel and water out in the bushes away from the site.

I got things ready and departed and after a two hour walk found Acorn Lake and a dock with boat rentals and spent the afternoon catching perch in a little hole I uncovered that was tucked away behind the shadows of four enormous Michigan White Pine. It was a fine day in the sun and fun to catch a good suppers worth, with stripes all up and down their sides. 

Time was nowhere to be found. I lived forever.

I sprinkled them with Shore Lunch and fried them up and drank red wine and waited for a second course of piping hot baked potato out from the coals. I was only angry I had forgotten salt for about fifteen minutes. Who doesn't bring salt, if he bothers to bring potatoes?

A gull cried that he could hear from the rocky beaches not far from where he'd parked. Everything was closer without any noise that could interfere but what was pure and breezy and wide open. All that spread apart the deep blue above him was a slender sheath of white cloud whisper, as if threaded, one slender seamless and centered cloth and it amused him to see such beauty right beside the small bag of trash he'd started gathering.

Now he wanted to lie down and swing in the hammock. He brought a paperback book filled with astonishing essays by Brian Doyle.

I swung from side to side. Watching what was made and witnessed all at once, in love.

It lasted forever.