Fresh Kills _ A Prayer - Day 11

A Prayer - Day 11

Where does all this madness end?

No answer.

I, in my mind, make a vision. I am thinking of some room I once saw in a museum.  It is some comfortable 16th century room from Germany with brick floor tiles and white washed walls and sturdy wood beamed roof.  Light is cascading in through thick leaded round glass panes into the room.

It evoked a presence to me when I was alive.  It still evokes something now that I am dead.  I have seen similar rooms in paintings by Vermeer. In this room is some sort of period bed.  It is the bed I seek but not for sleep.  I am looking to find a quiet room like something Luther had said.  I kneel in front of the bed.  Cross myself in the old superstitious fashion and begin in silent prayer.

What am I praying for? An end to this madness.  And exit out of this private hell.  This loneliness past death.

In a lot of popular culture and in particular the movies, you somehow get greeted on the other side with a guide of sorts, somebody you knew in life or some angel type creature to give you the low down on the new digs.

Strange how myth on earth would give you something in death that you never got in life.

Hey, it does take a village to raise a child.  But it is only in bits and pieces of experience, observations, failures, successes that we all in essence raise ourselves with the group, clan, tribe, nation.

Life does not come with an instruction manual.  That you learn when you raise a kid yourself.

Must have a child, children passed this existence here, back there etc.

It is something you cannot communicate to someone who has never had kids.

It is all well and good for some friend or unmarried relative to think that kids are great.  But they don’t have to run a toddler to the emergency room with a raging fever from an ear infection.  Then try and find some all-night pharmacy to fill a prescription of some bubble gum smelling antibiotic oral elixir.  Don’t have to get up with an hour’s rest and try to function in a job for eight hours and then come home to a spouse equally exhausted and try to function as normal whatever that is.

Where was I? 

I have only had some deep need to prayer a handful of times in my life.  Luther’s invitation to talk to the deity is a start.

Like I said, I have only done something as dramatic as the present situation only a handful of times in my life.

Prayers at a side of a bed are a child’s thing.  No doubt, the adult fear of death plants that fear in children with the plea to protect the soul, the spirit?

Never got around to nailing down definitions when I was alive.  Soul? Spirit? Are they different? Are they the same?

In that bizarre army oath of Constantine, they send Jesus into hell for three days.  Where do you park the perfect man’s soul for – it wasn’t even a full three days.

Such a strange religion I was born into.  Cultural context.  Was this Christian myth a full blown descendant of some story told around a campfire ten thousand years ago?

I am on my knees and the prayer or prayers do not come upon my lips.  Did my non-belief as an adult follow me here? Yes. This is useless.  What do I have to bargain with and to someone or something that is if it exists more powerful than puny little moi.