Comments on the channel Off the Left Eye vary in length. Some include multiple paragraphs, and it can be dicey to figure out how to respond to it all. My task is to keep it alive as a conversation, rather than a monologue, and to accomplish that each response gets a response. It seems that there are people determined not to let ours be the last word left hanging
without closure, so they write a "Thank you!" to my "Thank you!", or a "Bless you!" for my "Bless you!" It can go on for a while.
There are people I will never meet whose words stick with me, like oatmeal on a cold morning, warming my belly. Some of these are mostly effusive gratitude, which is lovely. Others express relief over a fresh picture of God's compassion.
Recently a woman (I think) said she was grateful for these daily
posts that help her in her "tattered life".
I can on occasion feel hurried, in trying to answer as many people as I can. But this brief statement stopped me in my tracks. The world stood still as I pictured someone in a nameless part of the world, whose experience is shredded, yet finds that these true ideas weave the strands together. At that moment there was no need to rush, or to explain. She has found meaning in a world that had confused her. I felt a ribbon
of affection flow to her, wherever she might be.
There was another that has me pondering still.
"Swedenborg's books had me wanting to make my marriage better, but my marriage made me better."
I could muddy that pithy admission with my own words, and I guess I will. There is a subtext that sometimes surfaces when I slow down enough to look. The commendable intention to improve the quality of my home life,
or the jobs I perform, or the community I belong to keeps my attention. Yet out of the corner of my eye I see the hand of God whose purpose has more than one dimension.
Those endeavors make a more beautiful version of me.