Odysseys in a Parallel Universe 2

But we also couldn’t spend the rest of our trip/lives hot-tubbing in our rediscovered Eden: we didn’t have any food!

So we walked back to Kos-town, got supper and a cheap hotel. 

And that’s when my friend decided he needed to return to Athens and straighten out some unfinished business before he could freely keep on traveling.

So we agreed: he would return to Athens, while I continued by myself to Israel by boat.

Then, in a couple weeks, he would fly from Athens to Israel and rejoin me there before Christmas with a new influx of funds. My money hadn’t yet arrived at the bank when we were in Athens, so he gave me some of his: $45US which needed to last me over the next 2 weeks: transport + accommodation + food too! Now that would be an adventure! My plans: get a cheap boat from Kos to Rhodos + then another to Cyprus or even all the way to Israel? Sounded possible; if such boats existed + the $45 would be enough to get me to my destination over 2 long weeks?

It all seemed somewhat ‘iffy’, so I penned this on leaving:

Of Kos

With pain and death in the one hand

And joy and life in the other

He walks amid the valleys of our minds

Seeking meadows to receive His Seed;

Sowing children for love’s growing hope,

Reaping the aged: seeds of springtimes past,

Searching out the youth which sleeps

Within the willows’ grasp,

Unaware of His close passing.

Prisoners of the reeds –

We struggle.

Raised upwards to the sunlight,

Tenderly kissed with rain –

We grow.

And eagerly reaching for a greater part of all,

We strike out on life’s highway

In quest of Elysian Fields

Somewhere in the future,

Oblivious to the warmth of His Presence.

Passing lonely winter hours within canyons of our doubt

Or lengthy summer afternoons in citadels of self-confidence,

We dwell among the feasting and the starved,

       tread upon the clover and the thorns

Feeling their pleasure and there pain,

Inflicting ourselves on those among the grasses

Ignorant of life’s final sting.

Of the stream, we drink its crystal waters,

  Yet think nothing of the life we take.

Of the tree, we eat its golden fruit

  And feel only the void filled within ourselves.

From selfish joy to unknown pains,

Fate blows us from our course.

Our rafts lie wrecked upon islands of ego,

And we, stranded, gaze longingly ‘cross

The Pacific,

Seeking out an albatross to bear our burden

             and an eagle to bear our selves

Homewards to security.

Frightened, we hide

Within fortresses of isolation,

While seas boil ‘round us

And wait…

Till the wall is breached and the tide rushes in

And the blood runs warm from the open wound;

A soul weeps crimson

In pain we pray

Begging trees to wash our sorrow free

And once again reveal the joy which we no longer see.

Clinging to pillars of our past

We are swept up by the waters,

Tossed high from wave to wave

And finally thrown upon shores unknown,

Soft with a mother’s sigh.

And there against the cliff – a new-found land,

We meet

Our selves

Within His eyes –

The image of sense within

Imagination.

From the rocks resound His Word,

Above us are the gifts He holds on high,

Wrapped in love’s rainbows,

Embraced in bonds of truth and understanding.

Life and death

We behold but a breath

Apart,

Within His Hands they are as one:

Natural complements our souls need not fear,

Each the merciful fulfillment of the other

Revealed as history continues to unfold

And men live and die and live again –

Brilliant flowers on the human landscape.

So much imagery about God in this, but I really had no idea what I was expressing?

I did not know the One I was writing about + inside I was a very confused young man!