Shattered Mirror

Bumping into Each Other

We are strangers in a crowded room of shadows…

Imagine a message flying across an ocean, gray pigeon weighed down with terribly important mail clutched tightly in its curled feet, winging over the vast stretches of sea. The letter falls onto an embattled landscape, desperate expression of a loved one separated from her son, her lover, her brother. She stands on distant shore at the edge of her continent.

Ideas fly across oceans down from the high Himalayas, up from the low valleys of the Mekong Delta, and crisply flying out off the deserts. Memes stream from the places of government, courts of law, gesticulations; soulful cries roll up from mosques, ring from churches and linger in peaceful temples. Across the world, prayers like flowers, pink hearts pumping. We call upon our gods.

Our bodies fly through space and clouds, transported around the world, going to jobs, reuniting with loved ones, seeking insight, fun…treasure; missiles and war planes, too, and car bombs and bouquets of flowers, and new poems and lost children. By the flowering tree a hand ripped asunder from its arm. Earth moistened with her blood.

For the whole of human incongruity is standing before us, exhausted, wide-eyed, a stranger wandering the Earth looking for some place, some reason.

We are not used to each other. No, for all our education, our high-minded ideals, we are not ready for this crowded room, this place of seeming shadows where strangers dwell….

I reach across the divide to touch I know not who. Behind your eyes what world do you know, see, and believe with all your heart is the one true world. Am I in it? Am I your enemy or your friend? Talk to me through this darkness. Can I come to know you and you me? Do we even want to try? Am I your infidel and you my nemesis?

In the shadows is one wearing a Crown of Thorns, a Heart of Compassion, and there is the Prophet of Love; an Earth Goddess and her peacemakers. They watch in silence as we bump into each other, recoiling then reaching out. We try to sense each other. Who are you? we ask. The soft chorus from the shadows says, Keep Looking.

Pieces of a shattered mirror lie strewn about. Pick them up! the chorus cajoles. Pick them up and see!