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Stone and Rain

Commentary: Summer 2006

Let me cast a picture and invite you in...

Close your eyes and I'll describe what you see.

Keep your eyes closed. If you were to open your eyes you would see hills and valleys, green with eagerness and youth, obscured at random with misted veils or small stoned pathways, winding at random like streams and brooks. Tiny arched wooden bridges punctuate here or there... but before you is a pond that a good stone can be thrown across, it is so small. The water is shallow, and clear, and cool to the touch. The bottom is of tiny smooth stones. In the middle is a large flat round stone, carved by man, reached by a curved path of flat round white stones spaced so that a single step is taken on each to the shore. You kneel on the edge of this flat stone, and if you opened your eyes and looked into the water below, you would see small orange fish with large wavy fins gracefully and slowly gliding this way and that, waving their fins proudly like flags.

Keep your eyes closed. The sky above may cloud over and then rain might fall, and can you say to the rain, less? The sun may shine but can you say more, or less? The stone you sit on is hard and cool, but if it's too hard or too cold, can you tell it to be soft? Can you tell the fish to be blue and not orange? There is much you can tell the world around you, like building bridges or stone walkways, but there is also much you cannot.

Keep your eyes closed. My heart is like the stone and the rain. You cannot tell the stone to be what is in it's nature not to be. It can only be what it is. This does not make it less noble. You cannot tell the rain to be less, for it can only do what it can only do... fall. My heart cannot be told to be less than it is. It will always hope. It will always seek beauty. It will always be weak for to be less would to be less. I would never choose half. When I give love, it's design is all. Modern ideas of holding back and machismo mean something to me, but nothing to my heart. It is not in it's design to be less. It wants all; to breathe deeply of the essence of life. The design of my heart is to surrender all.

You cannot ask the trees to be less green or to grow somewhere else. The fish, the clouds, the sun, the water, the stone, the rain... will be what they are. My heart is that way. Open your eyes now and find a passion so deep for yourself.

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