May 11, 2008

Gentle morning rain. I will not have to water the garden. I will not have to worry about the water getting too hot for the fish in the water gardens.

Pentecost, and here I sit in my flame-red shirt. The bishop preached this morning, upon one of those Japanese soldiers who went on fighting World War II twenty years after it was over. I followed sort of vaguely, until he said, "The war is over. Come home." Then I understood. I have been fighting and skirmishing and bleeding from ambushes, whereas God has been calling the whole time, "The war is over. Come home." Or, perhaps, the war hadn’t been over, but it is now. The immensity of it approached me like a great wave, which I had to stifle because I was in a public place. But soon, in a moment of calm, I will let it flow around me; I will savor what it means no longer to be at war.