A Soul Song of Humanity

Killing me softly with his song…

George. Sitting placidly. Waiting like a cormorant bird after swimming the lakes rests upon the grass, allowing the sun to slowly dry his feathers. He sits.

And I turned a corner. Pleasantly uncertain of where I was going I turned into a moment of convergence. He looked up with an elegant simplicity, ‘may I sketch you?’ he said in a sweet plain-ness. This was where I was going, ‘sure, came a willingness to let this be my sojourn.

We moved to a quiet spot and he sat, (perhaps unconsciously having done it for years,) into a posture of receiving the one before him. His eyes shifted from second to second between bright dancing engagement and dark open caverns reading into the recessed of his heart as his pen moved.

‘Maintain eye contact,’ he prompted, ‘so I can feel you.’ And I did.

His words began to flow like a stream from a lake, ‘when I was a boy we used to live on a farm in Australia,’ there was a wordless tenderness in his beginning of a share that would reveal a deep, deep confusion. ‘I used to look out at the sheep and the cows and say to myself, ‘I want my life to be like that, gracious and easy.’’ His soul laid out like a current arising from the depths of this lake to the surface, ‘I am a painter and I am 59 years old, and I do not understand how to be in this world.’ A tide of wordless understanding joined me to him.

You must understand the sincerity of this seeking soul. His quest was void of any distinguishable angst or resistance. ‘No one prepared me. When I was told as an adult that everything has a price, I did not understand what this meant.’

He breathed a sigh like the breath of the wind upon the water of his soul while his hand continued lines of sketch and his eyes darted up to look at me, his subject.

‘What does it mean that life is about making money so that I may have a home and be able to eat?’ Each word felt weighted with wisdom, even if there was no answer at the end of the sentence. The moment held us.

‘I have tried to understand, but I have not,’ he plainly continued. The illumination of his earnestness disclosed his state of being a living contradiction. ‘My paintings are in 27 countries and I am considered a success. Me, who also am incapable of providing for my basic needs, And now I am physically unable to become a dishwasher or deliver papers like in the past when my youth gave me endless stamina.’ All these forms of work exhaust me and defeat me.

His courage to BE true to his soul desire and admit so humbly his confusion reached into the deep waters of my soul pulling forward tears. Living our soul’s desire is not about this or that being understood. It only means that faithfulness to it will illumine our path of who we become.

From these deep waters, the winds of his wisdom caught us up. We became like a flock of doves just the two of us. We began to flap wildly into a wide sky, soaring.

Singing the song with you,

Kimberly.