Instances

Saturday, April 11, 2009
By the Fire, At Campsite (Mtshabezi Dam, Zimbabwe)
Day

There are a handful of very unique instances in my life when I
simultaneously feel infinitely small and helpless while also feeling
infinitely comfortable and content. It's one of those life paradoxes.
I ponder its imponderability. I often find these paradoxes in faith,
and if they feel like truth, they are often pretty amazing to
experience.

Well, now, it's night. The sun is down. The lights are out. The water
is dark. The mountains are narrowly outlined. We push out into the dam
in the hopes to catch a moonrise. I don't think I have ever watched a
moon rise. Maybe I have, but never with deliberate intent. And
tonight, the moon has been whispering rumors to his cousins of
yesterdays that tonight promises to be full with glorious light.

On this small fishing boat we squeeze seven of us in. Warren jumps
into the water to take a late night bath in the lightless dam
darkness. I lay on my back on the front of the boat and look up at the
lights. I listen to the laughter and play of Warren and the guys, but
I don't really hear them. Sometimes I take a moment like this to talk
silently upwards, into the blue blackness, or the rushing windstorm on
a beach, or the mist of a raging waterfall. I remember instances like
this with precise exactitude.

The moon has not yet risen over the mountain ridge, but we are able to
see the powerful light on the boulders brim. So, we idle in the water,
all of gazing east, all of us quiet, all expectant.