Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Touching My Father's Hand
I was listening to Rick Wakeman’s Out There album on the drive home. I’ve listened to it a couple times before, but it finally sank in with full force and left me smashed to jelly, and I only got through the first three tracks.
I was left with images of flying to orbit, then Mars, then Sirius, ever more fascinated yet alone. Dad isn’t coming back no matter how far I fly in this body. I won’t round a distant sun and have him say “here I am.” Nor will the dust of some distant icy moon spell more words of his love or advice to me. I won’t feel his embrace in an alien race. I’ll never forget my plastic gloved hand holding his cold swollen hand in the hospital as his heart beat its last, and my brother said “he’s gone”.
And tears fell as a soul rose. Reward for him, punishment for us to loose him.
“And as I look back on the stars,
It’ll be like a candlelight in Central Park -
And it won’t break my heart to say good-bye.”
God cannot be touched in the rocks of Mars, though his image is in the face of everyone.
Someday my soul will touch both father and Father, and my body will join me later, but for now…
For now…
There are rocks and faces to touch. Much to learn. Advice of wise Godly men and women. Things to learn from mud and stone and sky - things to learn from the vision where humans haven’t touched yet. Yet they have been touched by stars – the coherent points of sky-blue and amber light fires through the mind and heart. We are touched by the words of pens long stilled and hearts long since departed – poems from hundreds or even thousands of past years around the sun. Souls like ours, eternally climbing and sinking like birds in a thunderstorm, pressing on. Pressing on to land and safety somewhere. Answers… Beauty… Love… Understanding… The very ecstatic touch of God.
Words of God and Man passed through the course of human life, and genetically, before text began. Written in bones in stone, tracks written by centipede footprints in sandstone as they dodged dinosaur steps, worms beneath the Jurassic seas and filtered sunlight of shorter days. Speech of winds of suns exploding and casting fertile ash like zero gravity volcanoes making islands of the sea of light and dust, awaiting the life of God to speak and mould and breathe life into their soul-less molecules, making a timeless dent in the space time continuum. Making a moment aware of time. Aware of space. Aware of the breath itself. Aware of God.
They say a nuclear explosion is what happens when you take a pound of matter out of the river of time. Edward Teller said of the first atomic bomb, “At first I was disappointed. It appeared to be a little explosion. Then it flashed and grew brighter and brighter and brighter.”
A child is what happens when you place a timeless soul within the stream of time. Who is to say what is more powerful?
I was listening to Rick Wakeman’s Out There album on the drive home. I’ve listened to it a couple times before, but it finally sank in with full force and left me smashed to jelly, and I only got through the first three tracks.
I was left with images of flying to orbit, then Mars, then Sirius, ever more fascinated yet alone. Dad isn’t coming back no matter how far I fly in this body. I won’t round a distant sun and have him say “here I am.” Nor will the dust of some distant icy moon spell more words of his love or advice to me. I won’t feel his embrace in an alien race. I’ll never forget my plastic gloved hand holding his cold swollen hand in the hospital as his heart beat its last, and my brother said “he’s gone”.
And tears fell as a soul rose. Reward for him, punishment for us to loose him.
“And as I look back on the stars,
It’ll be like a candlelight in Central Park -
And it won’t break my heart to say good-bye.”
God cannot be touched in the rocks of Mars, though his image is in the face of everyone.
Someday my soul will touch both father and Father, and my body will join me later, but for now…
For now…
There are rocks and faces to touch. Much to learn. Advice of wise Godly men and women. Things to learn from mud and stone and sky - things to learn from the vision where humans haven’t touched yet. Yet they have been touched by stars – the coherent points of sky-blue and amber light fires through the mind and heart. We are touched by the words of pens long stilled and hearts long since departed – poems from hundreds or even thousands of past years around the sun. Souls like ours, eternally climbing and sinking like birds in a thunderstorm, pressing on. Pressing on to land and safety somewhere. Answers… Beauty… Love… Understanding… The very ecstatic touch of God.
Words of God and Man passed through the course of human life, and genetically, before text began. Written in bones in stone, tracks written by centipede footprints in sandstone as they dodged dinosaur steps, worms beneath the Jurassic seas and filtered sunlight of shorter days. Speech of winds of suns exploding and casting fertile ash like zero gravity volcanoes making islands of the sea of light and dust, awaiting the life of God to speak and mould and breathe life into their soul-less molecules, making a timeless dent in the space time continuum. Making a moment aware of time. Aware of space. Aware of the breath itself. Aware of God.
They say a nuclear explosion is what happens when you take a pound of matter out of the river of time. Edward Teller said of the first atomic bomb, “At first I was disappointed. It appeared to be a little explosion. Then it flashed and grew brighter and brighter and brighter.”
A child is what happens when you place a timeless soul within the stream of time. Who is to say what is more powerful?
