Y

the other night i went with two friends to the woods... to hike...in the night. probably not the most popular thing to be doing on a saturday night... but it was nice. the moon was hidden by clouds...and it was pretty cloudy... but i guess the light from town bouncing off the clouds had something to do with how bright the woods were that night. surprisingly, i wasn't scared at all. of course, it helped that one of my friends was a big, burly mountain man who made habit of walking through the woods at night.

we walked for at least 2 hours that night... the third of us was a genuinely free-spirited playmate...we would often run ahead of the man, tumble in the leaves, or pick up sticks and poke at eachother. sometimes we would leap against and press against dead trees in attempts to fall them...an opportunity to yell "timber" and listen to our echos... it felt so comfortable and safe to just play..and be silly... and it probably wouldn't have felt so easy had we not had his silent, calm, strong presence with us.

midway our trip we stopped at a little inlet of water... we threw rocks at this log and found that skipping rocks is very difficult with two sets of gloves on. at one point i told everyone not to make a sound and they all grew quiet... i was waiting for one of them to say something silly... to make the silence stop...but they never did... so i got into it as well... and God felt really close... i let my imagination run a little... saw myself climbing a lusciously green mountain in Africa with a ragged pack on my back...a little girl ran to me and i swung this emaciation of a child into my arms and ran my hand over her tiny frame... her wounds healed and her health was restored.... another image that crossed my mind was jumping from a towering, glimmering waterfall into the wild abyss of some jungle in South America...

as my eyes adjusted from my dreams i found myself staring into the bare tree limbs of a dry kentucky shoreline... seemingly unusually sharp and illuminated was a fork in a limb...only what stood clear to my eyes wasn't the fact that it was a fork, but that it was the letter "Y." So clear...that i had to remind myself it was a fork in the tree.... i felt in my heart "why not?" ....and i was reminded of the book i've been reading lately Irresistable Revolution and i recalled a place where this man confessed he was afraid to ask the Lord, "why?" about world poverty and such...because he knew that the Lord was going to ask him the same thing.. "why? you're my hands and feet...why do YOU let this happen? or why don't YOU do anything about it?" i think maybe God was letting me know my dreams are fathomable... maybe...

i packed up about a third of my closet to give away to the homeless in louisville... but i keep thinking that if they came to my door i would have even more to give...
i want to touch people... i want to help people.. i don't like thinking there are people starving and dying from it while i sit stuffing my face and abusing it....

i have this image of a fat rich man with possessions great and small all around him and in the next room an emaciated child too sick to beg....

how can i be so selfish as to allow my neighbors to starve...?
the least we could do is care....