Setting:

Grey and still and gloriously quiet.

Well, save for the fire engine sirens that just went off. But both before and after them, the world is a lulling little child, contained in nothing save the few tiny birds and the grey clouds which I wouldn't doubt are slowly drifting by.

The view from my for-once-open windows is like an ellegy to existence. Or, it's a slow prayer that drifts upward mingled together with burned up incense, like the ancients used to do. Those ancient, silent men in our history and faith tradition that stood in places like Mount Sinai or Gethsemene or the Red Sea, looked over and across humanity, and yet still hoped for its future.

I wonder how many of them thought we'd ever last this long? Did Abraham ever have an incling that he'd foster the continuance of tavesty and bitterness? Did Moses consider, what leading the children out of Egypt, that he'd aid furthering stark religious ideals in an unidylic land? Did Paul know that his philosophies would cause bloody wars? Did Christ realize that his kingdom would have people kill each other, slay their brothers, rape their sisters - all in the name of spreading the truth?

Sometimes, it's impossibly hard to imagine that this world is being rent to pieces while we speak. Especially when it can seem so idylicly peaceable, so astoundingly calm, so amazingly tepid. Hard to imagine the unspeakable evil that goes on in the hearts of our counterparts across bright blue oceans while songbirds hum so melodiously through warm, cozy afternoons - when everything seems so at harmony with everything else. Hard to imagine that just on the other side of the wall my window looks through is always inhumane pain, always selfish hate, always lazy faith.

Then, we hear the sirens. We hear the warnings of our world falling apart. We hear the bi-planes and the helicopters, and all the sounds we categorize into "silence". And we realize that the world isn't so perfect, so temperate, so mild after all. We realize our tendency to play it all down into warm afternoons so that we can feel at peace for a while. So we can breathe easy for a while. So we can imagine our world is tamed down for a little while.

So that we can feel the breeze and allow ourselves a moment of time to feel lazy, to feel lacidaisical, to feel lethargiccly at peace. To feel that there's some hope left to the running, scurrying, scrounging about we do the other 99% of the time.

-RK