Living Prayer

"Justin never knew the rules, Hung down with the freaks and ghouls. No apologies ever need to be made ... I know you better than you fake it ..."

Fog hangs low just off the Beloved Back deck making love to Fran's thousand shades of green. Staring at it through the muted light coming in the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, my mind keeps slipping off somewhere. My chin planted firmly in my hand, I'll come back from whatever universe I was in to realize that I'm still sitting here, part of the fog.

Mellon Colly and the Infinite Silence is streaming through my computer. My son Jeremy sent me this years ago. He and I have exchanged music forever. His beautiful sister Chelsea is part of the cultural exchange too and we all keep introducing one another to new things. Music flows through our bloodstreams.

It's the perfect batch of songs for a morning like this.

I'm listening to ... 1979 ... when my mind returns from wherever its been and I realize that was three songs ago. How did I miss it? Where did Scotty beam me? I guess I do believe in out-of-body experiences.

A power transformer blows somewhere on the island. The fog's lovemaking is wrecking havoc as people prepare for work and school. Sirens from Fire Engines are in the distance.

"And we don't know where our bones will rest, to dust I guess, forgotten and absorbed into the earth below ..."

Melancholy ... sad, gloomy or depressed.

I'm not though.

It's more wishful thinking ... beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of appealing to evidence, rationality or reality.

"Do you pray?" I was asked last night. "I never see you pray before a meal," the little girl asked me. "Do you know that God is over 400 feet tall?"

"That's a lot," I replied looking at her. "I kind of live a prayer," told her. "I don't think God cares if I say grace or not. Sometimes I do when its important to other people. How do you know how tall God is?"

It's in some book titled God's Promises for your every need.

I'm much more into Wishful Thinking ... "Now faith is the evidence of things hoped for, not seen."

This morning, I believe this is why Scotty keeps beaming me up and I continue to miss the melancholy music and lose the fog. I'm leaving the place where are words are necessary or rules are needed ... to go to the place where freaks and ghouls are one with everyone because ... we are all freaks and ghouls.

When my grandfather Ira Vernon Carver was dying, he lay in the bed in his own bedroom, unable to get out of it. It's the same bed that I heard him kneel down beside every single night and pray our loud. They were long prayers with his hands clasped and his elbows resting on the blankets and he'd call name after name. He sweated prayer. Then he'd get under the blankets and sleep. The next morning, he would live prayers.

During his last days, I'd go see him and sit beside his bed and he'd tell me everything he'd done that day. Without ever leaving his bed ... he'd go to Charleston because he needed to talk to somebody he'd prayed about. He described heaven to me once and I asked him how he knew.

"I just got back," he explained in all seriousness.

"I'm with you Granddad," I remember saying, holding his frail dying hand.

This morning I really am.

Beam me up Scotty.

We've got stuff to do. Things to make real. Fog to cast out. Dances to have.

Amen.

Hey Scotty! Hurry up! Get me out-a-here!