Monday, April 30, 2007

Poetic injustice.

Simple Words
The smallest words can have the biggest impact, even when we use them in a way that intends no impact at all, like when we think the person of whom we speak will never hear the words that flow from our mouth, even though we know from the pains and trials of our experience that words work like boomerangs, flowing through the air of life from one person to the next, often striking innocent verbal victims, who then share their pain and those unintended verbal arrows with the people nearest to them, thus continuing a pattern of hurt and resentment and suffering, which may not have been our intent when we first spoke those seemingly small, insignificant words but became the ultimate result nonetheless.


River Walk
We enjoyed our walk along the river, which was richly covered by trees and shrubs, all of which released a life-giving sense of calm and peace and relaxation, things we too often don’t find in a mad, mad, mad, mad world like ours, in a society that tells us to go, go, go and push, push, push, a society that tells us rest is a four-letter word, an accurate presentation of a fact but hardly the insult our culture intends, for when we discover the joy of rest we will discover more joys of life, and when we encourage ourselves to live lives of rest, we will find that we are a little less stressed and a little less worried and a little less frustrated and a little less anxious and a little less angry and a little less mad and a little less obnoxious, and a little more patient and a little more loving and a little more thoughtful and a little more balanced and a little more focused and a little more calm and peaceful and relaxed, just like the trees and shrubs along the wonderfully flowing, life-giving river.


The Camera
At the heart of the camera sits the lens, a masterful creation and a wonderful revealer of the world around us, a world filled with greens and blues and reds and yellows, colors that in one moment may blind us, in another moment lure us, in still another moment confuse us into thinking that left is right and right is left, that truth is a lie and a lie is the truth, confusion that can cause our minds to shake and our brains to shudder and our eyes to water and our ears to wonder if all we know and learn is true or false, right or wrong, here or there, real or fake like the world of The Matrix, with all of us living in some kind of dream world that seems better yet worse than a world to come, a world that is lacking yet yearning for a day to arrive, a world that is needy and hurting and empty and alone and isolated yet also hopeful and loving and optimistic and wonderful and God-blessed and God-created and God-ordained in a way that the camera can never quite capture, even as it gives us glimpses into the soul and heart and mind of what it means to be us.

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