I know it sounds creepy, but it's not. Let me try to explain why...
Wandering down a paved walk.My heart whispers...Stop and listen.
I look at the markers.
Notice the cuts that frame the stone and the interior carvings.
Angels and flowers. Crosses and Star of David.
Names and dates.
There are husbands and wives.
Beloved Mothers and Fathers.
Daughters and sons.
At rest.
That whisper again...Listen some more.
A deep breath, and then let it out.
I start to speak, to ask a question, but catch my tongue and bring my lips back together.
Sit down at a bench.
Close my eyes and bow my head.
Another deep breath.
It is a struggle to... be still and know. To wait. To truly become silent.
Wind.
Warmth.
Clouds and sunlight.
Birds chatter in the trees.
"Listen some more," He says...softly.
"Come a little farther," He says.
Before I should speak.
"Bado kidogo..." He says...
Because I can still see the slender Kenyan man, from memory, pointing me down the red, dirt road, toward a rounded turn up ahead in the distance. There is my destination. It is just beyond the field of maize, just past anything I can see clearly; just beyond all that I know.
So I continue on, in quiet, and then...I'm "there"... and I know it, because I can feel it. "There" is not a place but still an arrival.
I exhale.
And I realize that it is in this quiet, that
I am found and in full sight.
In this willingness to inch myself away from the cool, hard concrete bench and those
things that my eyes can see, my heart and mind are opened up to so much more.
Because I am now a witness to this world through Him,
I can become small again, and be protected; under His wing.
I can become whole again, and be hopeful; by His strength.
I can find peace again, and be healed; by His grace.
But only when I step away..."Bado kidogo..." He says.
* Bado kidogo is a phrase in Swahili that roughly translated means, "just a little bit farther." :)
