Thoughts about Seeing 

This World Anew 

Since breaking thru the sound-barriers of the Christian faith and entering those written-about ethereal experiences... I have become frequently...well the word isn't exactly 'amazed', but more like 'surprised'...at what I missed in the years growing up: that is to say, in those everyday meanings of general conversation . For instance, as to what things actually meant even in idle conversation. And serious conversation as well. Or in just simple 'talk' over the backyard fence with a neighbor. Or across a dinner table. Then there are those passing comments you never give a second thought to. Or never take into consideration the innuendos and shades of meanings. Or remarks that throw light or shade on the talker and the talkee. Somehow, I missed all that. 

Everything back then didn't have shades of meaning. They were blunt traumas of white and dark. Bright and grey. Strong and weak.  Sometimes, nothing at all. Skipped over and passed by with not the nudge of respect for any existence whatsover that an important observation went unobserved. Now, so many years later, I catch those tides and turns. I see how the body glides thru and cuts thru the waves to make it to the shore. Back then, what mattered if I floated as a dead body onto the sand of some distant unknown continent. I was young. Life meant nothing so deep as the cutting grooves on an old vinyl recording. It was smooth for all I knew and it played music according to my own ears that made sufficient sense to get by thru the day.

Now I see people stopped in their tracks by the few key words placed in pertinent references along the thoughts expressed as a compliment. Where was I all the while back then? I missed out on another world of living people.

What was I? A bouncing bottle sent afloat from one continent to some magical world across the ocean? If so, I finally arrived, and God opened the bottle and dumped me out back into life, this time with an eye or two open. And an ear or two opened as well. Then, some may say, well isn't that what growing up and maturing is all about? To them I say, "You see those old cranky grown ups with absolutely no clue as to what's happening around them. They're still floating in some bottle on that endless ocean somewhere..."