Remembering Reincarnation
The first in this series can be found here.
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Can a dream have a nightmare?
"I can hear the cries of a thousand people. Wood, pressed to my back, the earth digging into my feet. I know this place, I've walked this path. These people have called my name before in a hundred dreams, in a thousand landscapes, in a million hearts. My mother is weeping, her tears hit my feet, wetting the dirt, creating mud, and creating sorrow. Hail Mary, full of grace...the Lord is with thee."
His eyes fluttered open to a vaulted ceiling and candlelight, tossing shadows carelessly over the finely carved wood. Myriad colors of glass melded together to create scenes of The Passion, of The Crucifiction. Rows of wooden pews, and an ornate alter all hushed with the silent holiness of the place. Come Sunday morning this place would be filled with various walks of life; it would teem with wishes, and doubts, boil with hope, and fear. But now...now it was quiet and the whisper of the memory of human emotion fluttered like doves' wings pounding against a stained glass window.
Jude sat upright, creating a shudder in the very foundations of the church. If buildings could breathe, this one would have sighed, sucked in an expectant breath and then released it in a quivering whuff. The feeling radiated outward, as when one touches the calm surface of a still pond and tiny waves ripple outward in rings of larger and larger magnitude. This place wasn't immune to sorrow. Faith does not protect one from the things that festered here in Meridian. No, faith only amplified them. You can ignore the pain of isolation, you can forget the absence of God, and Love, and Light. But someone with Faith, they're aware of the emptiness, and it gapes, like a wound needing bandages. That's what Jude was, in some other life, in his past. He was the dressing to the gashes in humanity, to the bleeding, crying masses. But what was he now? He didn't know. Do any of us know what we become after resurrection?
That's when he heard it. The manifestation of that emptiness, the lonely sobbing of another human being. It whisked through the empty church like a wayward wind, catching little bits of emotion and tossling them about in its wake. Her presence came to him on that wind. She was dirty, hair caked with grim, forsaken by so many things, but not by Jude. And he stood, and moved to her.
"I'm here"
It was called out, let loose from his throat to reach her ears. She didn't look up, knees curled to chest, bare feet sitting up on the pew, face buried in layers of old clothing draped around her frail body. Close your eyes. Picture a child, skinned knee, face shining with tears, pristine innocence ravaged by cold asphalt, a broken dream, a shattered faith. Something so common, so plain but with the power to make you want to protect. The majesty and pity of a weakened creature. This woman, he knew her plight without having to ask. What was she searching for in this holy place? Perhaps nothing more than one person, one human being to weep for her. Jude knelt down before her, rested his hands upon her bare, cold ankles. The connection with such a being made both entities heave a sigh of relief, both Jude, and the unnamed woman. Two tiny creatures, huddled together in the face of emptiness, in the face of one big nightmare. His tears washed her feet, and her weeping cleansed his soul.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Can a dream have a nightmare?
"I can hear the cries of a thousand people. Wood, pressed to my back, the earth digging into my feet. I know this place, I've walked this path. These people have called my name before in a hundred dreams, in a thousand landscapes, in a million hearts. My mother is weeping, her tears hit my feet, wetting the dirt, creating mud, and creating sorrow. Hail Mary, full of grace...the Lord is with thee."
His eyes fluttered open to a vaulted ceiling and candlelight, tossing shadows carelessly over the finely carved wood. Myriad colors of glass melded together to create scenes of The Passion, of The Crucifiction. Rows of wooden pews, and an ornate alter all hushed with the silent holiness of the place. Come Sunday morning this place would be filled with various walks of life; it would teem with wishes, and doubts, boil with hope, and fear. But now...now it was quiet and the whisper of the memory of human emotion fluttered like doves' wings pounding against a stained glass window.
Jude sat upright, creating a shudder in the very foundations of the church. If buildings could breathe, this one would have sighed, sucked in an expectant breath and then released it in a quivering whuff. The feeling radiated outward, as when one touches the calm surface of a still pond and tiny waves ripple outward in rings of larger and larger magnitude. This place wasn't immune to sorrow. Faith does not protect one from the things that festered here in Meridian. No, faith only amplified them. You can ignore the pain of isolation, you can forget the absence of God, and Love, and Light. But someone with Faith, they're aware of the emptiness, and it gapes, like a wound needing bandages. That's what Jude was, in some other life, in his past. He was the dressing to the gashes in humanity, to the bleeding, crying masses. But what was he now? He didn't know. Do any of us know what we become after resurrection?
That's when he heard it. The manifestation of that emptiness, the lonely sobbing of another human being. It whisked through the empty church like a wayward wind, catching little bits of emotion and tossling them about in its wake. Her presence came to him on that wind. She was dirty, hair caked with grim, forsaken by so many things, but not by Jude. And he stood, and moved to her.
"I'm here"
It was called out, let loose from his throat to reach her ears. She didn't look up, knees curled to chest, bare feet sitting up on the pew, face buried in layers of old clothing draped around her frail body. Close your eyes. Picture a child, skinned knee, face shining with tears, pristine innocence ravaged by cold asphalt, a broken dream, a shattered faith. Something so common, so plain but with the power to make you want to protect. The majesty and pity of a weakened creature. This woman, he knew her plight without having to ask. What was she searching for in this holy place? Perhaps nothing more than one person, one human being to weep for her. Jude knelt down before her, rested his hands upon her bare, cold ankles. The connection with such a being made both entities heave a sigh of relief, both Jude, and the unnamed woman. Two tiny creatures, huddled together in the face of emptiness, in the face of one big nightmare. His tears washed her feet, and her weeping cleansed his soul.