two

by bam

it’s a pair now. a twinned set. there was one. and now, two.

for two swift years this little black place, with the alphabet in white, it’s been a nook, a cranny, a cove of my heart.

some days it’s the place where i curl up in a ball, but keep typing anyway. some days it’s where i let rip my ball of kite string, and hope to lick the clouds.

two years. day upon day, week upon week, laced together by the ebb and flow of seasons, tumbling leaves, cresting moon, the stars, the birds, the growing child.

life passes, i reach out and grab it by the fistfuls, put it down in words. take snapshots. suddenly, there are volumes, I and II. not bound. not tucked on a shelf. but here to read and read again. to remember.

that’s the point, after all.

to hold up each and every day, each moment, as if the holy blessed communion host on the altar, in the church, when the priest in all his robes takes a simple chunk of bread, of wafer, and with a sweep of arms and silken vestment, raises it up, holds it still, so we the people in the pews can behold it, drink in what it means.

so it is with life. and days. and hours. and incidental moments.

we hold them up in words, in snapshots, so we can gaze and think and study. so we can understand what might not be so evident the first time by.

it is why writers write. we write to think, to feel, to absorb, make real.

and so, two decembers ago, a chilly day, like this one, a bright one, too, i set out to start scratching in the sand. i had an inkling. i was breathing life into each and every syllable the way a kindling log needs bellows to turn to flame.

over time, and with each passing paragraph and page, i found, in part, what i was groping toward: a voice, a whisper, a deep still sense that there are those of us who hear and feel and partake of the same soft stirrings.

we don’t much believe in noise, not for the sake of sound alone. we prefer to stitch our hours and our hearts and our homes with knots of grace. and beauty, too. defined not by magazines, but by eternal spirit. what was and always will be a light divine.

it’s what i look for every day. it’s what i hope to harvest, bring home in little bundles and bushel baskets, maybe.

to each of you who has joined me here, who has pulled up a chair, even only once in a long while, i thank you.

it’s been a lonely year, a long year, in some everlasting ways. but whenever i tiptoe back to the table, and find you’ve been here, left a word, a story, or a simple nod, well, i am filled more than you will ever know.

it is a fine thing in this world to know there is always a safe place to come home to, a gentle place, a place where love surely reigns.

bless you, so very much, for making this humble table so deeply alive. you’d almost think, some times, that it was real. and not just a figment of our computer screens.