Tuesday
In the distance the afternoon storm clouds were building in intensity. The dark and deep grey colored clouds threw a menacing aura across the sky. Rumblings from a far off place began to reach the beach. A flash of lightening pierced through from the clouds, appearing to hit the water and then explode.
I stood at the sea-shore, the gentle waves lapping my feet and the coolness of the water refreshing my body. My eyes caught sight of a rainbow coming out from the denseness of the dark clouds. It arched across and though the soft blue sky in the opposite direction. It was so strong in color I could clearly identify all of its colors.
Then my eyes caught the glimpse of another rainbow, much fainter yet as I looked it began to grow in size, depth and color. Wow! A double rainbow, a bridge between the worlds!
I turned around to see a man sitting quietly on the beach, his eyes staring in the same direction as the clouds and the rainbows. There was a deep sadness to him; he had obviously been deep in thought.
As I walked by him I heard his voice, “It is a beautiful rainbow, did you see it?”
“Yes I have been watching it also, and in fact there is a double rainbow, the second one only just appeared!” I replied to the man.
“You are right! I wonder if the storm in coming this way!” he said all the while looking at me.
At that, I stopped and we talked small talk about the weather and rainbows and the beach. Yet his eyes seemed to be seeking other conversation. He then began to talk freely of another subject.
“I had to come down here today to get away and think. It has been a very emotional day and I am not sure how to handle it all. I have been attending a class on the Holocaust for the past two days and I think I am in some sort of shock. The descriptions, stories, pictures have touched me so much I am not sure I will be able to go back tomorrow. There are a couple of people, presenters in the class who have so much anger and hatred in them, and then there are others who have come to their own acceptance and peace with their family’s history.”
His emotions and tears were right on the surface, raw and exposed.
Without being asked I sat on the sand. I was just present as he shared more and more.
“What do you think about death!” he quietly asked me
The question did not surprise me yet I really didn’t have an answer ready. I thought a while. How do I approach this not knowing his religious views, his family history, nothing! I could be lighting a powder keg if I was not careful!
I quietly began a dialogue. “I perhaps look at life and death from a slightly different perspective than you. It tends to be more from a metaphysical and spiritual direction.” I believe he was listening but he wasn’t hearing what I was saying yet!
I continued. “On the physical level, the loss of a loved one or anyone for that matter brings a sadness and void that is experienced so very personally and internally. Even though the external dialogue may say one thing, the true deep pieces are beyond expression.”
“Our body, this thing right here, patting my thighs in emphasis, is like the framework of a car, all of the working parts are there, it is calibrated and tuned to run smoothly and efficiently, gas is in the tank, oil in the engine, fluids where they are supposed to be, yet it is not until the living, breathing driver gets in the car does it have the possibility of coming to life.
To me, our Soul in co-operation with the Life Breath are similar. Without these two working, flowing and BEING together, the body cannot function naturally. Yes! A respirator can be placed in to breathe for a person, yet when it is taken away it is the Soul that then determines whether to continue to breathe life or not”
I noticed how calm and gentle my words were, they just seem to float out.
His eyes reached out, “Why so much hatred, why did so many die, how could people arrive at such a state?” This was fragile ground!
Even as I write this story now, several years later, the time and conversations are so close to me and I guess always have been. Fragile ground, because there have been times when my explanations have been taken to appear as a lack of compassion, caring and even coldness on my part.
This is very far from the truth (in explanation, not defense). I have discovered to my surprise, the more spiritually evolved and aware I become, there is also a natural growing detachment from earthly life dramas and an increasing unity of understanding of how we and all our experiences are interconnected and have meaning within the grander picture.
To clarify this statement a little more! It is always so much easier to view and detach from other people’s lives and dramas than your own. I still have not yet mastered an optimum of personal detachment from my life dramas. I am working on this daily!
I continued talking with the man, whom I shall call Tom.
“As humans, we have free-choice. This has been told to us for eons of time by most ancient and religious teachings. The free-choice is that we can decide one direction or another. To do good or bad as most people will say. Yet who determines what is good or bad, right or wrong, for what ends up being accepted by society or the law in one place may seemingly be the opposite in another.
Another way of looking at this situation is that the actions we see may be the bad, yet good comes in the form of what is learned, changed and healed by seeing so dramatically the consequences of the bad action and choice.
The Holocaust and similar actions of genocide mirrored in Africa, The Balkans and other parts of the world show how tragic the outcomes can be, how they can change the landscape of lives in distant and not so distant places and over such long time frames.
Yet it is not until we see such horrors to rock our internal barometers off the charts that we are forced to declare a powerful and vocal rejection of such actions.
Perhaps the gift their Souls are imparting to us is exactly that – declaring a powerful and vocal rejection of such hatred and actions with the hope that one day they will exist no more!”
I stopped talking and looked out to the sea, to the endless sea where the sky converged at the horizon line. The sun was beginning its journey in the west, the warm rays descending into the sand.
Tom began sharing some of his own thoughts. Thoughts were just rambling though his mind in no particular order, perhaps just as a way to pass through his sorrow. He began to share stories of his parents, his youth and his family. We ended the evening on a much lighter note and agreed to meet again the next afternoon to review what he learned in that day’s class.
We met again on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, quietly reviewing and discussing the topics and what he had noticed from the participants. Some had changed and softened, others had not, and he expressed just how destructive a force the anger had become.
The next Monday evening Tom called and asked if we could meet at the same time, same place the next day. “I would try, if my schedule was open.” I replied.
Tuesday Afternoon
As fate would have it, my schedule changed in the middle of the day and I was not able to meet Tom that afternoon and had no way of contacting him to tell him so………….
Continued in Part 3 coming soon!
