An Author's Offering

(The point is to be a little confused at the beginning... don't worry!) I’m a bunny in a breeze. I’m a frog in a frenzy. I’m a mole in a mountain. I’m a lion on a lawn. I’m as slippery as soap, and as stubborn as a sailor. I’m as listless as a lump, and as harried as a hamster. I’m a human in a pickle, looking for identity, lost in metaphor and riddle, searching for analogy. I find I’m both and neither…  everything and nothing… Until finally I decide: I’m not a character,  portrayal or example, I’m me: impossibly complex,  and truly unexplainable. 

We often describe this life as “fine,” “good,” and “same old same old,” when the truth is, it’s not. Often, we’re drowning in a sea of change, loss, hurt, confusion and loneliness.  Sometimes we’ve fallen so deep into a pit that we don’t see a way out. A rope was thrown down after us, our only hope, but often it seems no hope at all. It is slippery, and we can feel it slip through our fingers no matter how tight we hold on. We can barely keep hold of it, and salvation seems impossible. We are so deep underground we can’t even see the light of the opening above our heads. We’re weighted down by mud and dirt, and long for enough oxygen to really breath. We may begin to panic, or give up all together. But still, we manage to keep hold of that rope, the only way out. Maybe, it will eventually become dry enough to climb, or someone might even pull us up. Because if we let go of the rope, our hope, then we will never get out of the pit.

In honor of Independence Day in the U.S.: There once was a child born in Kansas,  living as centrally in the U.S. as can be, who loved the land of Dorothy and Todo,  but knew nothing of the world beyond the horizon they could see. ~~~~~ They asked their dad from Georgia,  “What is the country beyond the border?” The father responded, “Son, it's the land, of the American dream and entrepreneur, Where you raise your children on good American values, prepare them for the land of self-governance, where through hard-work and commitment, if had in abundance, they will be ready for self-independence. And most of all it’s the land of the brave, and along with that the land of the free, with stripes and stars flying in the sky, and hoping for better for you and for me." ~~~~~ But then the child went to their mother, and asked again the question of before, looking to the woman born in California, “What is the country beyond...