Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Who Let In The Rain..?

There’s an old saying: “We plan, God laughs.”  I heard this today: “Make plans, but understand that we live by Allah’s grace and by Allah’s plans!”  Sounds to me as if there’s a lot of similar thinking going on – and yet too many are still being judged by the name of their worship, rather than the common goal.

Someone asked me tonight “Why do you persist in letting things be rough?”  And the thing is, I think he expected me to answer him.  If I had those answers, I wouldn’t be sitting here now at 3:15am typing to an internet full of strangers when I could be sleeping peacefully. 

Peace.  Just when I thought I had a hold on it, I turn around and find a big chunk missing out of my ass.  They say that pit bulls aren’t bad dogs, they have bad owners.  Seems to be that way for me with this peace thing.  Zen and light work great for some, but I appear to be just another bad owner of it.  

“Maybe you take things too seriously.”  Is he kidding with this?  Of course I take everything seriously.  It’s the nature of my beast.  My husband just let out an overwhelmingly loud snort in his sleep as I typed that – subconsciously he must agree.  My response:   “Nearly all things pass.. some just pass more than once.” 

But my friend isn’t aware of the many things that haunt me at 3:23am.  He’s chased his own demons, and I’m still learning where it’s left him, but mine are my own and there’s no need to justify them.  Ghosts of songs that echo resoundingly in the attic that is my head.  Spectres of dastardly deeds that point their fingers at my madness every damn time it trips me up, chanting “told you so!” like a mob of Brady kids gone wrong. 

My delirious mind wants to fall asleep.  This isn’t something that eludes me every night, but when it does it’s as if there’s a crack in the universe that I can slip through for just a moment, and toss out my thoughts like stars to scatter the night sky.  I couldn’t possibly do this if I didn’t persist in what I know, if I wandered from my path because the little GPS on my shoulder said “Recalculating… turn left!”  Sometimes we have to go against the voices.

Sometimes we have to latch on to that common goal, no matter how we come to see it.  Whether God's will, Allah's grace, my friend's casual curiousity of my malleable mind, or karmic destiny - it all leads us to the same place; inner peace and understanding.  Tolerance.

What was that old song that Pebbles and Bamm Bamm would sing?  “Open up your heart and let the sun shine in!”  Bunch of hippie songwriters. 

Once again I find myself looking for that ass-chunk that is the missing peace of me.