Day of Heaven

“Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”

― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

 “Call me Ishmael.”

― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

"While he was still speaking, another came and said, 'The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.'"

― Job 1:16

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Dear Kate,   

I am of two minds about my loneliness during adolescence, as much as I am about the sociability of my children in their adolescence now.

Call me Faceless.  I was the boy perpetually looking through the fence, behind a wall of occipital buns, never expecting to be offered a part in the ongoing story of rock-paper-scissors or soccer, ping pong, volley ball or card trading.  I didn't care much about sports or any sort of competition, but the cards surely looked colorful, shimmering, giving out a strange smell of novelty I could catch even from a good distance.  I didn't know where them little people got them beautiful cards.  I didn't ask my parents if they could get me some too.  I never expected to be given any.

I went to the library to make friends.  One time I took out some books before class and finished them before the first break.  Tidy/anal as I was when it comes to not keeping what is not mine, I brought them back to the librarian (back then you would need to face a human being to hand stuffs over) during the break and she wasn't happy.  She thought I was wasting her time, taking out stuffs that I didn't want and now troubling her to shelf them back.  Of course I couldn't confess I was reading during class--that could possibly result in public shaming (that, honestly, could have been fun).

I heard from you and the news that fire is ripping through Oregon, and your family is put on notice to get ready to evacuate.

I was thinking about writing to you only after the fire is gone, since I've missed the opportunity before it came.  To write to you now during the inferno of your experience is probably crass of me.  Call me Heartless.

Back to normal, this must be your wish now.  Sure as hellfire I know it would be mine if I am where you are.  Yet the fire must have started somewhere and go on ravaging someone else.  Why not your town, your house?  Why not you?

Every time I write I see myself one day writing from a hospital bed--that is, if I am not paralyzed from the neck down or already a vegetable.  God is there before and after the fire, but today He shows up to ask for a personal face-to-face with you.  Today is the day you shall know who you are, and maybe a little bit more about who He is.  If you grew up speaking the language that is the opening of Richard Wright's Black Boy or Frederick Buechner's Brendan, you should know this is your moment to speak in tongue of fire, not before or after.  You would have known Days of Heaven are also days of locust and fire.

My children speak differently, and to some extent I am happy for them.  They get along with people speaking the same tongue.  Back to normal.  I try to see them one day in the fiery furnace and wonder if they will have a Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego for a friend.

But that is not my vision to see.  It is theirs.

Yours, Alex