Just a little more time is all we’re asking for…

I know I’m not promised another minute. My experience is one of rebellion. A denial of a universe that moves whether or not I agree with its motives. Most of the time I don’t mind feeling small in the face of creation. But right now I want it to notice me. To provide answers that my work has taught me don’t exist. To provide concise data, not that it would change the outcome. How does one yell at boulders? Or expect windmills to care?

At least I find a comfort in their enormity; they are big enough to take it. Trees and rain absorb everything I’m willing to throw at them. The Mountain promises to be here whenever I need her. This landscape’s wisdom and solace just waits for me to wring myself out. The squeezing is the hard part.

My anger isn’t because my father is dead. It’s because things didn’t go how I imagined they would. We all thought he would live to be a hundred. He probably did too. We were the only ones who cared about things like that. Life had other plans. Sackcloth and ashes aren’t for the dead but the living; it makes no difference to the old gods. It’s up to me to learn something from all of this.

“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” Dorothy Day has no time for my bullshit. But I’m not hopeless. There is a difference between surrender and release. The woods tell me letting go isn’t closure. It’s acceptance. I need to remember to walk in them more often in these days.

Never surrender. Release.