Earlier Conversations

Oh God. I hope that You are not an impersonal force.

- I'm not... -

You say, and You speak with such gentleness.

You are so patient. I feel You laugh... and You are soothing. I was thinking how I "hear" You in this wonderful wind out here. Then I started to think of Your largeness, and became afraid...

I cannot believe how wildly the oaks sway!

-See the tensile strength I have built into them? -

At first I thought, well, why write it down? It just seemed conversational, and would it even be of any interest later? Oh! You mean more than the trees, don't You?

You mean us. Me, my beleaguered friend, my family: whoever I'm fussed about.

-You will bend but you will not break.
The storms of life will come
for they must,
but you will not break.
I have said it. -

I don't want to make "stuff" up.

-You won't. -

but You sound so soft. How can it be louder?

-Live close to Me.-

please help me. I've been so distracted lately.

... I hear You in the wind!

It's like being taken and swirled around and enveloped by You!

-Just a little...-

This wind. It takes me back. Something about my childhood. The Heights. Virginia - but it is different from the soughing of the pine trees.

I try to go back. I remember loving the winter wind and somehow feeling held by it. But the thought of it without You seems too empty and pointless to bother.

-I was with you then. -

But I didn't know You, then.

-Yes, you did. In your little child's way. -

And I got a flash of myself as a blonde-haired toddler, bending over something, curious.

-I took great delight in you. -

Because of knowing what You had made?

-And what you would become. -

I'm so afraid of making things up.

-It comes easier because you are more relaxed.
Loosen up. I'll take care of you. -

It's funny. These are more of conversations.

-To each is given differently. -

And as I think back, I remember not wanting to go inside because the sound of the wind that day, filled me and enveloped me. At two and a half - maybe almost three, I could not have said what it was I felt, let alone why... but now I suddenly realize that it was You there, in the wind, that held me. I did not know Your name, then, and I don't think I could have even conceived of You with my mind -- but I knew Your touch. Even then I remember feeling like it was someone and that there was more love in that wind than I had ever known; and I felt more at home there than anywhere I had ever been. Even though I was so young that I remember little from that time, I can still feel how my heart felt like it was being torn out when my mother decided we had to go inside. I vaguely recall that she seemed puzzled by my reaction.

As I left the back porch to step over the thresh-hold, I knew a moment's panic that: oh - it would never be there again, not in that way. Then I felt the sides of my head being "held" and I suddenly knew that it would be.