“Power.”

B.

All this power has to be subject to higher principles. What good does it do anyone if we can do only what we want? What good does it do our own souls if we are left to only our own ideas and devices? We are not at all ready for all that. We can barely wield it responsibly over ourselves.

 

We are in the right school for it though. We can see the lines around the galaxies. We know there is something behind every veil and a person behind every curtain. There is much to consider about the state of the world but much more to consider about the state of every human soul. All the hard power exercised in the world today, moved by sprites and demons or not, is wrought through human hands. The human experience shows us what power without light does. The divine experience calls us to remember to put power in its place: the opportunity to live in the light and not to dwell in the dark of our own solitary desires.

 

“Winning.”

 

F,

And so, what if we win? The other side of the coin is just the other side of the coin. All battles give temporary reprieve. We win by keeping the faith till the end and not by beating the problems in only the present. There is a large swath of forever to come. This is all training for that.

We win by being unchanged by the cries of victory, by being unmoved by the prizes this portends. It is like with anything else, the win is an opportunity to do something. It is not the end of the matter. In many ways, it is only the beginning of things. And this is a good thing. We cannot react to temporary things with permanent smiles or frowns. In winning or losing, we are walking into the things to come. We face both with the same heart. None of it works until all of it works. No one has become whole until all of us are free.

 

“Losing.”

I,

It was an honour to lose with you. I know the noise and the rabble after every contest is always the same. Winning is everything and losing is full of insight and reflection. This is not all true. How and what you win matters. And how you lose matters even more.

 

We did not fall down a flight of stars. We stood on something and for something. In the end, it was not the path everyone took but beyond that, it is not a temporary or permanent state. We are not here for a few battles but for the mighty war of values. We believe in the order and beauty of a seemingly random universe. We believe in the creator and the moment that births and holds everything together. Losing is forgetting that. Losing is when we fail to remember that, as the very wise man said, “…the victory of darkness over light can only be temporary.” 

“Weight.”

  

N,

We argue all the time about the true weight of sin. I know it has no eternal value. You think the sting remains. We both agree there is a sting to it. In the growing up of grace we hurt other people. In living in the darkness of our own pull of gravity, we harm ourselves. It is not a weight we should carry. We ought to put down these foolish and unguarded expectations of our own ability to be good.

Yet, the weight is just a weight. It is something to put down, finally at the feet of the cross. I cannot say how much the light chooses us or how much we choose the light. It must call to everyone one in some way. It must say in clear terms: this weight on your back is not meant for you.

 

“Freedom”

H,

The lights always come on in the end. This is our freedom. Grace means we are not a straight line. We zig zag through life at speed. We are not able to be credible at our own goodness. We are both victim and perpetrator in the crime of being human.

Yet, the light still comes up over our own heads. We can see it calling. We know there is more to the present things we do. We know our fatal flaws will all be replaced. We do not live in fear. We live in the light. We live in freedom.

 

“Final Days.”

  M.

I have no fear of my final days. I know I will spend them thinking of you. I do not think of what is on the other side too much. The human mind is too small to comprehend it. The heart only knows it in rumour. The body cannot enter it. The only real pointer I have for the universe is the heart we share and the life we are building. It is the great shadow that is full of its own points of light.

The final days are not the end. It is just the end of time. We will break free from all of that. We will be as boundless as the universe is. We will not be alone but we will be ourselves, not needing but wanting, not in shadows but full of that real light and no longer merely in love but as love itself.

 

“The Things Unsaid.”

M,

I was always in a hurry to speak my mind. I had to say everything. It had to be clear where I stood on everything. And it was all around me and my words and my heart and my need for sacrifice and some sort of satiation of the strangled soul. Now, I live more for the things unsaid.

There is a peace and joy in knowing you are loved. This is clear when we first encounter God. The thing people outside do not get is the wave of relief at the idea that there is purpose to the madness in general and form in and love for the specific madness that is you. Love is nothing if it is not specific and individual. The thing, mostly unsaid, is that love only works in every single soul. There is no group love. There is only love. 

“That love might stay.”

 

M,

The absolute terror, in my early love of you, of the possibility that it would not stay, that something would taint it, that my flaws would kill it and my hubris would lie alongside my wounded sense of self when the truth comes knocking: the final nail that declares love unworthy or, worse still, me unworthy of love.

None of that came to pass, though. It all went deep into the ground and not out into the atmosphere, useless. It became the thing we are building our life and three other lives around. It did not fail. It has not failed. It has brough back the thirst for honesty, for truth, for the whole self in everything and no part of it left out. Now, it is clear that love will stay. And I intend to stay in it. 

“Love is the ultimate resolution.”

 

M,

It is perhaps too easy to say love resolves all things. There is work to do. Yet, that work is also the work of love. Beyond or beside the greet feeling lies the great forgiveness, the great mercy, the great healing, and the great resolution of all our dark spots. We might summarize what love is but it is the main portion of that eternal book of life.

There is no weakness in love. It is the strongest thing there is. Everything else is a reaction or some distortion of fear and terror. Love stands by itself. It is action, it is words, it is the ideal and the body of the ideal. Nothing will be resolved except love. Nothing will remain apart from love. Our little stabs at it, our little plays based on it, cannot possibly decipher the whole theatre in which it is supreme. It is that singular thing between you and I that will remain enflamed forever, no matter what. 

“Starting Over.”

M,

I have always found it hard to look behind me. The past is not something I wrestle with too much. I am, in a sense, always starting over. This has its good sides, but I also fear I have spots in my memory because I zip pass the crucial replays. I am always trying to be light on my feet. Sometimes, it is better to let the heaviness in.

There is always the weight of history. And these things are to be resolved, not avoided. There is no beginning free of everything that came before. We do not put down an empty load to be relieved of an empty burden. The burden is real. We must resolve it. 

“Life goes easy.”

 

M,

Still, we learn to go easy on each other. It is just life, and we are sharing it. This need to be right ends in the same silly statement from which it began. There are no prizes for being the right one. There are no separate prizes at all. We are learning not to be lonely. We are learning not to be singular, and we are learning to not to lose our minds by ourselves. Even insanity is better shared.

 

The ease that comes is not giving up. It is hanging up those boots we used to call pleasure, but we now know is only escape. It is learning to be quiet because we do not need to fill every moment with noise. It is being at ease with one home, a nation united under the joy of its own weight, not scrambling, or suffering but at peace. It is knowing this house is all we need. And that love stretches, all by itself, into eternal form.