Estampes

    I turn my face to the bright face of the sun and almost immediately, I shut my eyes against its blindness. In that brief millisecond I close my eyes to shield them from the sun's light, a flash of that orb's shape appears behind my lids. I blink once, it is there. I blink twice, it is gone.

    A streak of lightning illumines the sky and I lie in bed, waiting for the next one to strike. I can never tell when it will. And then, one second the darkened world is exposed, and the next it is returned to blackness. The only sign to indicate the flash occurred was the rumble of the ensuing thunder.

   I listen to the scintillating melodies of Debussy and something stirs. Beauty and emotion stir but what precise beauty and emotion? I flounder and scrounge for the right precisions of beauty and emotion that impress me.  And, just at the very brink of my discovery, the music subsides. It always ends. The impression lingers on but it soon fades away.

   Rolling around and around in my mind is this: Fleeting, fleeting, life is so fleeting, full of fleeting impressions. Yet, Christ is the counteraction, the Element, the One Person in life that does not fleet. He lasts forever; He is forever. He always was. Still, he is to me the flash behind my eyelids, the lightning streak across the sky, the un-grasped melodious impression. He is to me fleeting because I catch Him in waves.