It was spring and he struggled
against the wind as he walked his route. A storm had blown through recently and
the lingering winds still buffeted. There was trash and debris in the streets,
empty pizza cartons tumbling across yards and fallen tree limbs across the
sidewalks. He stumbled occasionally over broken bricks and dislodged chunks of
concrete. These things, however, would not keep him from his appointed rounds.
It was spring and it was Lent and
somewhere overhead a hawk was screeching. Was it a warning? He thought about
the passion and the pain that waited in the next few weeks. “Not everyone can
carry the weight of the world,” he said to himself and was reminded of a song.
He thought of T. and of J. and C.,
his friend, his colleague, his brother, all of whom had reached out to him in
the past year to say something of their struggles with life and their wrestling
against death. “How can I carry that weight,” he thought to himself and he
remembered his own occasional suicidal contemplations. “I can barely handle my
own.”
He’d always felt like the family
failure – with no college degree and two failed marriages. “How can I carry
this?” He shifted the load he carried and stretched. His neck popped twice. He
stretched again and his back popped as well. He sighed and continued along his
path.
J. was there along his route, out
for his regular morning walk. “How are you, J?” he called out to him.
“Not too good,” J answered in his
halting manner. “I’ve been thinking about God and it hurts.” Then he let out a
long and warbling wail. “It’s not been a good day.” He offered what solace and comfort he
could to J. and promised to see him again the next day. Perhaps things would be
better then…
Somewhere overhead the hawk was still screeching. Was it a warning? Was it a comfort?
Later, as he neared the end of his route, something triggered the memory of the way old Mrs. D. would play the piano in the lounge area of the nursing home. She kept her foot constantly on the sustain pedal so all the wrong notes – and there were many of them – continued to ring. And he remembered her singing through the dissonance:
“Let peace begin with me; let his
be the moment now.
With every step I take,
let this by my solemn vow:
To take each moment and live each moment eternally
Let there be peace on
earth and let it begin with me.”
It was
spring and it was Lent and he had miles to go before the end, but he would
walk. He would carry what weight could shoulder and he would talk about the
passion.
Let There Be Peace on Earth – words and music by Sy Miller
and Jill Jackson
Talk About the Passion - words and music by REM
