Watershed

Well, I've had a Watershed Moment.  As I look back over my journals, I'll see an inviolable barrier between the Then and the Now. A religious experience, an epiphany. A psychotic break?  Either way, can't go back.  Someday, I'll elucidate what happened. But not just yet.  Looking for the Old? Look no further.

Last night, the wind kicked up around the house like some kind of Oklahoma fancy dance. I felt (more than heard) it wrap around the house like a bullwhip from the west to the east and back across the mountain. And then, followed the thunder—a fracture in the sky. A deep rumble of...discontent? No. A cleansing. The Holy Spirit rumbling deep and primal. A weeping. A lament. The babes cried out in the night. Mama! I went. 

Four police cars turned off their lights and moved up the street. The ambulance was long gone. I hung up the phone with my neighbor and new friend. Two doors down, a young man shot himself in the face. A moment of blackness and despair. As I made the dinner and drew the bathwater. He died. This is the fourth time I've been here to see an untimely death. Each time, I've been shaken by the sheer logistics of it. Ambulance (always with firetruck) maybe police. Maybe not. I'm not talking about violence or drug use or anything else you might mistakenly associate with this neighborhood. Just a cycle of life. But there's something profoundly disturbing and unnatural about the business (not of being born) but of dying. There's a system, you know. The wheels don't fall off the bus of civilization like they should. 

All day, I've been gripped with a profound sadness that has the potential to change my heart forever.  And it's not for one man, it's for all of the men. I guess that's another precipice we negotiate when something like this happens. Do I let the suffering come in and settle or do I sweep it out the door with a new straw broom?