Suspended Sensations

Whispering Echos

Flitting in dark corners.

Warm silence

Filling your ears,

Like Alice,

Sleepy Wanderer,

Wondering: Where

Am I again?

Sneaking Suspicion

Sneakers stray

In circles chasing

A flutter flying

Just outside the 

Blurry landscape lines.

Rolling over, crack an eye,

There, over the clock,

A moth flitting.

Pillow warm,

Filling your ears

Dreams: whispering

Echos.

Normal

Normal.  What a usual, every day word.  And yet, what is normal?  We toss this word about in a negative light, an aspiring one, or a mundane one.  But what is normal if not the pursuance of the things that, at our core, make us human?  To be loved, to Know, and indeed, to love knowing.  To be normal is to exist on a plane that is unbounded by time, emotion, petty disputes or relative notions of society.

What if we strive to do great things because we are compensating for the failures of our life that we cannot escape by any means other than excelling so far above them that they are mere dust in the wind?  Perhaps by achieving those great accomplishments, we feel as if our life has been normalized – the scale is tipped more towards the balance for which every man or woman that has ever lived has struggled, and most struggled in vain.

Consider your own life.  Do you fight against being normal?  How many times have you lifted an upper lip, sneering the word “normal” in reference to breaking the mold of society which, while being the very thing we seek to defy the most, we cannot seem to do without its good opinion of us.  How many times have you – have I – shaken our fist at the Norm saying “I am not with you!”

What is it to be normal?

Maybe normal is a struggle, or a journey.  Maybe normal is not something we see until that fleeting second when life leaves our lungs for the final time, and in that last exhalation we finally understand.  Maybe it is after that.  Or maybe normal is something that we can never truly understand or discover, because maybe none of us are as normal as we would like to think.  Perhaps we are all abnormal in a world that yearns for the opposite.

But that wouldn’t be normal to say so.

Chorale

Join me in my musical musing 

Dear, dear reader.  Life comes quickly, doesn't it?  Here I am, nearly 3 weeks away from being married.  I've noticed my recently graduated friends musing over much of the same thing recently - being an adult, I mean.  I'm working full time now, I'm making decisions about paint colors and what socks to wear in the mornings, and I'm working and I'm sleeping and I'm working some more.

Some people look at life like this and they just assume that this is all it is - rote routine.  Which, you'd find ironic if you read my last blog post.  But recently, I've been catching up on reading I promised myself I would do in college, and it pushes me.  It spurs me onward towards my Passions: those big things that we each dream about in high school or college - the things we cling to with a desperation that drives us to put one foot in front of the other each and every day.

This post feels a bit scattered and ethereal to me.  Much like my life right now does.  But, friend, the chaos of our life, no matter how scattered and detached we feel now will lead us into eternity in ways you and I could never have imagined.  The crazy thing is, God has wonderful plans for you and me.  And whether we are just secondary characters in the stories of our own lives, or whether we have more say than we'd like to think, the chaos of our past and the passions of our future will back us away enough to get a larger glimpse of the Bigger Picture.

Sometimes when you're just laying in bed, exhausted and ready to be done with your day, you have to listen to beautiful voices and write down a few beautiful words.  I hope they put a small smile on your face tonight, tomorrow, or wherever this post finds you.

Thank you for being you, dear dear reader.  You are one of my Passions.

The beauty of the past,

Even though the pain lasts,

Is the contrast of the dark,

Which brightens your gold heart:

Beautiful chaos.