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Friday, December 31, 2004

A New Year

Well, this is New Years Eve. I have had the good fortune and blessing of being surrounded by people who believe in me and want the best for me. In the past few weeks I have received additional confirmation of those facts in the form of encouragement, prayer, wise counsel, and additional tools to aid in the pursuit of my own goals and dreams. Consequently, I face this coming New Year with a renewed vision and optimism. To that end, I wanted to offer you something a little different today. So, instead of poetry, here’s a dose of good old fashioned prose. It seemed fitting, as this short story came out of a week of rain and looks towards a hopeful future, towards something new and better. My hope and prayer for you is that your New Year may be full of promise and the courage to take hold of it.

A Ring Around The Moon
By Frank Carpenter
The iridescent moon was not quite full, though seeming somehow larger than usual... almost as if it filled the entire evening sky. And then there was the ring, that big beautiful ring around the moon. Not a small ring like halo or a belt. No, a giant, endless, wonderful ring. For that moment, the ring seemed to encircle all that I knew or could imagine. For that moment, the moon and the universe within the ring which enveloped it were everything. The silver sky, or something within it, held me entranced, as it were, for a time unmeasured, or unmeasurable. Perhaps I lay there only for a moment, an instant, though it might just as well have been a lifetime.
Nonetheless, I felt as though everything changed during the encounter. That conclusion was unmistakable. The winds of change blew over me. Silently, sweetly, certainly. They were not such winds as I could detect merely with my senses, or which disturbed so much as a single blade of grass around me. There were the winds which blow through our souls and swirl within our very being, the winds of inner change.
The moon was still there, and very much so. The ring was still there. Yet, suddenly, I became aware of other things around me. Other things which had long cried out to be noticed, to be understood. Who's voices had been carried away by other winds and drowned out by more urgent voices. Yet, now I saw, I felt, I knew.
I became aware of the ground beneath me. How long had I lay there, in the wet grass beneath the moon and its ring? Ah, the ring. It had been raining for days. The ground was wet, more than wet. It more held me than supported me, but the feeling was not unpleasant. The grip of the wet ground against my back, against me long soaked clothing was a comfort, almost a relief. Without the pull of the moist earth, I might well hare drifted off toward the moon above, lured b the intoxicating glow.
I could feel more than just the ground beneath me. There was more, much more. There was a whole world. The same world I had always known, yet which now seemed strange and wild and undiscovered. That was the change. I could no longer accept everything which before had been so clear, so concrete. I knew the world had not changed in the least, but I had. So, in relation to me, everything else must change as well. I inhaled deeply. Not the kind of breath which merely replenished oxygen in my lungs. I inhaled something better, deeper. It was a breath of life, of things so long left undone, unsaid, unknown. I was different.
However, I understood somehow that I could not be different alone. I must make the world around me to be different like me, or with me. Was it a calling? Perhaps more of an accepting. The acceptance of a call so long unheeded, one nearly snuffed out in the shuffle of daily life with all of its infinite, urgent details begging to be attended to. We get so busy with living that it becomes something less than living. I had forgotten how important every minute detail is. I had forgotten how very important life is. Now, I remembered.
All of this happened within the circle which held me all that time. The ring around the moon. Just an optical illusion, water vapor, reflected light, barometric pressure. Perhaps. Moon dust and magic are, however, somehow more appealing. A sign, a signal, a catalyst. It was enough. For whatever reason, I would never be the same. I could not, nor could anything else be. Blame it on the ring, the moon, the movie, romance, whatever. The world, the universe, were entirely different than they had been just a shore time before. It matters not the reason, for the why and the hows only serve themselves, yet they would be our masters if we tarry long enough to let them enslave us. No, there are other more pressing issues at hand ... broader frontiers yet undiscovered. Let it begin.

May you have a blessed New Year ... and the courage to make it a better one.

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