B_r_a_v_e_s_o_u_l

Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, a gazelle awakens and knows it must run faster than the lion, or it will perish. Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, a lion awakens and knows it must run faster than the gazelle, or it will go hungry. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a gazelle or a lion. Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, you had better be running…

…and so i was. I was running, dashing even, panting, throat-dry and completetely parched from tyring to outrun my soul, from stretching my litheness beyond its limits…. and for what? For what was all these exhaustion? For what was all these stumbling and these regaining of gaits? It was all for that ever enticing… yet ever so elusive… senseless finish line.

Oh yes, it was entirely senseless, purposeful I thought until i realized i was chasing down nothing but temporary heights… nothing but empty and oh so nicely packaged delights.

Oh yes, I had been running for as long as I can recall, as soon as I was set free to chart the world in my own terms. And chart I did, diligently at first until I had been charting and navigating for years I told myself I was tired, and torn, and broken, and betrayed … unable to chart any longer what turned out be a unchartable expanse all along.

It was then when I came to listen to and rely on that inner voice, that which came so faintly at first, but continues to evolve into an inexplicably audible experience I cannot seem to get enough of.

I call that voice the whisper of my ONE, calling oh so incessantly until i succumbed and flourished, until i shut it out one time and almost "perished", and until I allowed it once again to consume me like I had never heard the sound of another in my life.

And so today, that voice has carried me from unchartable territories to boundless borders, it has carried me far above the mornings of Africa, where I watched and cringed as lions and gazelles, much like me, would wake and pick up where they left off the day before.

Still a lot more of us are trapped in this rat of a race. Still a lot more of us continue to fail in this race. If I can, one day, articulate this voice,these whispers from my One which led to a resolve to quit the rotten race, I will.

I wish I could do so now….but I haven’t stilled my heart that much, enough to make the silence of my soul speak for itself. Though I continue to stir, I can feel that overwhelming morning of quietness about to consume me…in the fullness of my brokenness.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 am and is filed under Resouls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.