Bricks and Writing

     It is a night to write. Not for any profound insights. There are no great philosophical revelations. No threads to pick and pull and watch the mystery sweater of life unravel. Simply put, the wind is blowing like a freight train but I can only hear it if I stand outside. Inside, looking out, the only evidence of the wind is the dancing and swaying squirrel freeway (aka the evergreen trees). Why these two images make me think it is a night to write I do not know?
     I have always observed life. An appropriate occupation for a hermit. I listened for what wasn’t said while remaining ever alert to the “isms,” fighting words, hurting words and labels. I learned the power of words to destroy and heal, to inspire and to stifle. Listening fed the desire to write. I became irreverent in challenging why God would allow things to happen. I become reverent when I saw the hand of creation move among the earth and her creatures. I learned the power of “And then?” when I wrote, to challenge my own thinking and beliefs as well as others.
     Writing was a way a hermit could engage the world and yet remain behind walls. In building a wall to shut the world out Life gave each brick a tale, a name and asked “what do you see?” As I would write the bricks became inscribed with people’s names, their hopes, their fears as well as my own. Once the story was done I would cast the brick into the ocean of life. The water would explode releasing hope as the pain sailed away on a brick funeral pyre. I would write what I saw, until one day, I realized, at last I had no more bricks and the walls were gone. Perhaps that is when I learned to laugh.
     I write now to engage in the dialogue of what it means to walk this earth. I write to try to understand this journey called life. I write because I will not let the twists and turns of fate that have both daunted and inspired me upon this journey remain in a potter’s field beneath an unmarked grave. Both the daunting and inspiration have a purpose.
    Sometimes you can feel the movement of life brushing against your face, making you lean one way and then the other. You know it’s there and you create a dance. Other times you are just a spectator watching the evidence but you miss the touch, the sensation of being there and the dance. Writing takes me there and allows me to dance with the wind even when I am not physically present. I guess that is why I say I pray to write. I write to pray.