A Life Worthy of One Simple Word
In a world of words, I want just one.
Just one that jumps out and claims me.
One that tells a story within a story. One that speaks to the deepest darkest depths… of the heart of this writer’s life… the word that makes sense of the wild and crazy journey I’ve been on.
The word that has compelled me, sent me out into the world to find its meaning, because it existed inside of me before I understood it… and then went into hiding, but always… always it was there.
A word that has taunted me to seek it in the daily grind, in the excruciating pain that consumed me, and in the beauty of fleeting moments that I believed were sacred… but, discovered haunting loneliness instead.
Through ugly loves, choices of spirals that were misguided and flawed, because I believed in the lies that were not real, but acted against everything that on some level I knew was right.
Through beautiful loves too… loves that have given me hope in the seeking of a sustaining truth.
A word that sums it all up and turns it all upside down… inside out… makes it all right in the soul… in the breath… in the wings that hover and protect.
In the loving eye that has always kept me in sight… in the uttering of the word… in the qualities of holy… of the holiest of holies whispering.
In the gentlest of breath uttered by my ear and fluttering along my cheek that it makes me quiver.
A waft of it swirling up into my mind, down into the ventricles of living life pulsing with particles expanding… drawing me somewhere closer to the only known that matters.
There is a book, a second book. A memoir. It’s waiting for me to write it. It’s preparing me. I’m sifting through moments to explore it, to investigate what wants to be rescued, inviting the theme that wants to be revealed.
A word has moved ever so gently in… and onto a Post-it Note where I can gaze upon it, and give it space to shape its essence.
I was visiting my parents this week. It was a good day, a good visit. I brought out their tin of photographs and let their memories come alive. I had mum write names on the back of the old tattered black and white photos.
I listened to tales of long long ago. Eager and attentive to catch glimpses of parts of them I never saw, never knew. Maybe I would learn something that would help in the making of sense.
Then my breath caught and my eyes wettened, not quite spilling over, but close. There in the listening grew a certain amount of anxiety in me, maybe even panic.
Their recollections… their memories… their sagas would soon be lost. Where would they go? What tales would I remember, or not remember, because so often in the grasping to hold near what is dear, it slips away.
Where do all of our lives… just us ordinary folks… the memories of them… where do they go? Generation after generation?
Does it matter? I don’t know.
But, I began to comprehend that there was so much that I didn’t yet know about them. At 92 and 88 time is running out for me to find out.
Short catching breaths.
What happens if our family tree dies off? Who will remember? So many precious moments… where do they go? What meaning do they have… in their having once been… and then no more?
Maybe I should make time for more visits. Maybe I should write these recollections down… capture them somehow. So much to be grateful for that I have been blind to all my life.
Where we hurt. Our trials, our suffering, our rage, our injustices.
What if they are meant to be our gift and our strength. If only we look up and see through the eyes of God’s love. We might see something altogether different.
In a world of words, I want just one. No flashy subtitles. Just one word.
Maybe… because…
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
~ John 1:1
This one sentence, it speaks to me daily. It informs me in ways I do not understand yet. Somehow, I feel it defines my life, or the life that I am in the unfolding.
The Word… the word… it gives itself to me. It chases me. It’s so good to me. It presents itself as a mountain to climb and a living water to swim in. It creates me alive.
In a world of words, I want just one. May it be so.
I wonder… if you had a word that told your story, what would it be?
In abiding love,
Kiernan
