The identity candidates clamor for recognition, crowding together as if on cue. Physiology, the loudest calls, all of these tissues, organs, and limbs. There are more cells in a single human body than people who have ever lived. There is matter, lots of it, shaped into a the unique form of you. True, shares an invisible view, except there is mind too. The ability to think and reason, the awareness of joy, sadness, and suffering, the desire to know literature, science, history, art, language, mathematics, the potential to create - Nay. Nay. There is a restlessness to speak. But spirit shall first have its say. What is a "me" without the soul? spirit muses. What watches over mind when it thinks, when it challenges in grand style the notion of continuous being, when it rests and sleeps, when it meditates, when it watches the rise and fall of the chest. There is the sky though. Yes, the wind whispers. That is really the best way to find answers, or at least the birds and mechanical forms that inhabit it. And don't forget color, sound, and general sensation. Notice how perception organizes, into music and art. A rustling beneath a bush inquires about creation. From whence does it arise? The author may be quail, or squirrel, or perhaps the rattle of a disturbed snake. Take care! An eagle alights with confidence on a pine tree, to the left side. An apprehensive ant carries its oversized cargo, down here, with frantic effort, on the right. The boy in you would have stepped on that traveler, the clouds sigh. Nature nods, wonders how man learns to conserve his might for more wholesome interactions, for struggles that matter, for grand considerations such as the self. Somewhere, cars are honking. People are pushing. Seas swell, ice shelves melt, walls are built, and civilization presses itself together, expressing its will. Microbes proliferate. Some kill. Others bring health. Sometimes there is balance. What though of beauty. What of sorrow. What of the ability to glance toward a morrow that may, indeed, yes, may always still be better, at least compared with the frame we name today. Who gets to say? In the silence that follows, the group shrugs. They are full of replies. None are answers. They know. As do I. We celebrate this: the ability to move. To read. To share. To notice the breath while the chest expands width and life probes for depth. Where do I begin and end? How about you? Is it for me to judge? Does it have anything to do with God. Yahweh. The Creator. The first cause. The infinite. I am - here now. You are - just the same. The universe is - always. More? Nothing is for sure. The whole though, that must be. That is. That is what is. Perhaps I am not who. Nor, then, are we, too. The universe though, it still is. And the infinite remains. Call it what you may yet recall that we are born amidst a great mystery. Such is the nature of mercy. Such is the peace cradled by a simple smile. Just there, ah, right there - I feel myself - if only for a short while.
Sweet!