Morning Rain

I am sitting at the computer listening to the rain falling on the roof.  It was drizzle early but now the tenor sounds have given way to baritone and bass droplets heavy with spring.  The green in the city is wonderful. But I do like the feel of rain.  Going to and fro work I am dressed for a different element of weather.  I will have to step gingerly through puddles, carrying my umbrella.  The traffic will be slower with more risk of accidents, danger and delays.  There will be darkness and ominous clouds.
I can forget more easily in the sun.  In the light I can soak in health and happiness.  I would that the rain washed away my sorrow and pain but it does not.  I fear the barometric falling contributes to the chronic sadness now so evident in my feet and hands. My friend laughingly called it 'stigmata'.  But my back hurts as well and that is so lacking in Biblical reference.  Graecian Roman as in Atlas perhaps, my grandiosity a burden to bear no doubt.  So many injuries and perhaps so many more years to go before the end is welcomed.  It has long lost the flavour of a race.  I am slouching towards Bethlehem at best.  I am Jonah trying hard to run away from Ninevah at least.  
I have faith.  There have been so many signs and miracles in my Doubting Thomas life.  I've been blessed with knowing God whether his shouting or his wee small voice but still I care not to listen. I have a little dog who teaches me that his routine lack of obedience never affects my love for him.  I call and he may listen if there's no distracting interesting dog or smell to cause him to delay his return to me.  I know I'm his human.  I am God's dog at best.  I do his will with the same enthusiasm my dog does mine.  If God wants to play throw the ball or go on an adventure in the woods then I'm a hundred percent his man.  But if it's daily routine, the getting in to work and wrestling with the chronic infusion of State into the affairs of men and the demands so costly of all the beggars in high and low places, well I'm like my dog. His attitude says he was bred to hunt and run and fetch game home not to walk at heal in city streets waiting for his human to pick up his shit and deposit it in some bin somewhere other than where he'd rather go.
I'm recalcitrant at best.  The pain causes prayer.  Injuries turn my life inward.  I am alone with my mind and see how silly and repetitive it's themes are.  Fears, resentments, worries, desires.  All is suffering.  I'm full of self condemnation, speaking to myself, worse than I'd speak to my dog, judging myself a failure when there is so much success to be considered.  I confess and no confession seems enough to unload the baggage I as quickly reacquire.  I'm lost in paths laid down years ago when this destination I've arrived at seemed so much more than what it is when I am there.
I'm journeying, always moving, like a child.
Sitting still I meditate in the morning, begging God, petitioning God, talking with God, listening for God, forgetting myself, silently, wanderingly distracted, losing focus in the persistence of this life when death to self is all that is sought.  I am in God's hands but numb.
I know that the pain measures my distance from God.  I once thought pain was a word trick that reminded me that I must 'pay in' and that 'pa' was 'in'.  Schizophrenics taught me the power of words.  My father was as the father in the biblical story,  Abraham and Isaac, told best in song by Leonard Cohen.  I find solace in water.  Hot tubs and swimming pools are where I feel the greatest relief, returning to the sea in search of an umbilical cord.
I eat, defecate, see, hear, smell, touch, and share with others, even having sex though it's been long since I wrestled or butted heads and shoulders in hockey rinks and playgrounds.  Now only my dog and I rumble.  Even now he sleeps and I envy his capacity for napping and lack of demands on his time.
It is time now to move along.  I've a onerous chore to do and must get to the office to respond to attack .  I am sure God gave me these fingers for poetry and I've wasted the gift on rhetoric and logic. Already I'm preparing the anti venom writing to the venomous and thankful that God loves 'peace makers'.  War is so profitable and the State is ever in an orgy saber rattling and  phoney fighting with constant fabricated emergencies making a mockery of their own indulgences.
My pain comes from believing we really all should be dancing though today even my feet hurt and my back hurts and somedays my head hurts especially as the week progresses and the tiredness comes from facing threat after threat by blue collar and white collar antagonists who know no better.  And Jesus said, "Forgive them for they know not what they do"  
And my pain is constant restraint, holding back and holding in, the desire to join in the hostilities.  I have turned my cheek 70 times 70 times and more and bourne the lashes countless times in good faith waiting and working.
I hang my head in sorrow praying for patience and peace and hoping for the day I return, a prodigal son, at best, but a son nonetheless.  I know there is a home for me in Heaven and as my friend John likes to say Heaven is all the way to Heaven.