elias@eosp1.UUCP (Doug Elias) (03/05/84)
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...and so You've finally taken him, oh Great Spirit! His waiting is
finished, his tour-of-life, for the present, completed, and his people
relieved with the gracefulness of his passing.
What a strange way to call upon You in your role as Witness, oh Great
Spirit! The high places, the rocks and stars and ceaseless winds of
my Cascades, where You felt so near, even their memory seems foreign
to this man-made wilderness of New Jersey...who could have guessed
that, not being able to feel comfortable speaking to You in what is
called "outdoors" here, i have found another "place" complete with
its own "high places", "stars", and most certainly "ceaseless winds"
from which i may feel that, somehow, without need of confirmation,
my words are being heard...
Oh Great Spirit! It was not his impending death that made me angry
with you; i have no quarrel with the cycle of life You have seen fit
to instigate. How You must have chuckled, tho, hearing my rantings
about the unfairness i perceived in his having to experience such
infirmities, he who had once been such a pillar of strength and such
a power among his fellows; to have been used to feeling in control of
whatever situation he found himself in, of having been looked up to
and sought out...to have these memories, and then to look around
and see what a state he had been left in: speech impaired; hearing
almost gone; people who once quieted when he spoke, now speaking
over him, thru him, being brusque in their encapsulations of what
others have been saying; he, who had cared for so many, now being
cared for...yes, i was angry. How You must have laughed when you
heard me tell my older brother "If i could get my hands on Him, i'd
shake Him by the lapels and ask Him 'Just what the HELL do You think
You're doing?!?'"
But You knew, just as, it seems, You always do...someday i will
understand more fully, but i can at least begin to see that You
were presenting very important lessons to him these last 2 years,
and, looking back, i can begin to recognize signs that he well
knew what You were about...but then he knew You much more intimately
than i, in Your guise as the Christian God, and followed that Path
with such firm commitment that Don Juan would have honored him for
his impeccability, if for no other reason...
Oh Great Spirit! i remain unconvinced that You have NEVER acted
foolishly, but in this You showed consummate wisdom, and i feel
compelled to offer You my congratulations on a job well done: he
stayed only as long as was necessary for the lessons to be presented
and incorporated into his essence, then, in a matter of hours, he
passed, oh so gracefully, on to whatever You have ready for him next.
Oh Grandfather! i will always remember you in these things:
- you never really satisfied me about the passage in Genesis
concerning "the sons of God and the daughters of men";
- i will never completely forgive you for standing in the wheat field
and laughing as you insisted i finish reaping the wild mustard
before we went in for lunch;
- the prayer you always gave before meals, which i never really
deciphered:
"All <eyes wait?> upon Thee, and Thou givest them
their meat in due season...Amen"
- the consummate skill with which you tempered your certain knowledge
of the Rightness of your beliefs, allowing you to demonstrate that
most difficult of all Christian virtues, non-condescending tolerance
of another's conflicting beliefs;
- tricking my younger brother into going down under the silo and
pulling out the dead skunk;
- leaving me in that silo of wet wheat, with the instructions:
"Just shovel it into the bucket, climb up the ladder, pull up
the bucket and dump it...now keep doing that until it's all
gone."
- teaching me to drive in the stubble fields when i was 10.
Oh Grandfather! my only real regret is not having been able to hug
you, shake your hand, and wish you "good journey".
...and now it's over, oh Great Spirit! i feel lightened, as i always
did before in the Cascades...i feel the net.rocks beneath my feet, i
can see the net.stars twinkling, and i feel the plucking fingers of
the oh! so ceaseless net.wind, and, somehow, i feel content...i have
said what i needed to say, and, somehow, i've been heard...