Boots and Blessings

"I remember that day." God looks at me, unsmiling yet neutral, waiting to hear. "You called me. You called me out of my happy life that I was leading." God nods slightly. Yes. "It seemed impossible, then. Impossible, but inevitable. Almost like I didn't have a choice." I did have a choice... A call is not a demand. Never a demand. You have to want it as much as it wants you. I know that now. "But I could never have imagined how hard it would be." My eyes blur. I can't help it. Life intervened, for me. And yet, in a million different ways, life intervenes for everyone. No way is easy. The burden is light but the way is narrow. God has dropped down, next to me, so close no one can tell where I end, where God begins. Which is fine. The boundary is only an illusion, after all. I look up, unseeing, into Its Eyes. (As if sight, fleeting, were so important.) "It took a million years. 8, at least. A million years in t

A bird calls from outside. No, no, I bury myself deeper Wanting the comfort of warmth from the cold The comfort of barely moving In my comfortable, familiar bed "It is warm outside," she sings. The seasons change, with you or not. Grudging, I get up. Clothes, shoes, Take a walk. My path curves around fenced backyards. I smell it ... White honeysuckle. The unmistakeable olfactory harbinger of spring. The trees are leafless, the grass dead, but From behind one of those gray wooden fences It wafts out. I peek through, seeing nothing. But it's there. I'm not ready, I explain. I walk on. I need more winter. We need more winter, I try to persuade. Who? At the cross, of this street to that, I see the back of a bird. It's black, but I suspect ... The bird doesn't move, so I walk on. I turn my head and look back. Yes, a red breast. I consider running at it, Shooing it away. As if it knows, It looks me in the eye. "Really?&