the sigh of god

Night. All is dark. All is peaceful. I live for these moments. Time stands still.

I sit. I listen to the wind make continuously original music with the leaves. The crickets provide rhythm. Somewhere in the distance I hear a couple walking, conversing, enjoying the brisk autumn night. And now they are gone, all is silent again, and I'’m once again alone with my thoughts, the crickets, the light breeze, and the grasshoppers.

I’'m sitting on the front porch of our new house-house, enjoying a few jiggers of whiskey, and thinking about life. I enjoy these moments; I tell myself to hold onto them. But they inevitably pass, and my memory forgets the peace in silence. But silence is never silent; witness the crickets, the wind, the grasshoppers, the roar of a city too distant to see, its energy close enough to feel.

In moments like these I am convinced God is in everything. I take seriously my belief in God the creator (even if I also think evolution is a plausible scientific theory). God creates, God breathes life into the world, and a piece of God lives in everything. Maybe the crickets, providing me company on this brisk night, are the voice of God. Or maybe the wind, when it momentarily gusts through the trees, is a sigh of God. But why would God be sighing? Is God tired?

I write to remember. Weeks from now, I will have forgotten this moment of peace. But I will then read these words, simple as they may be, and I will remember, and I will seek peace again.

The night protects many secrets, blown away and held in silence by the wind, originating from an unknown place and destined for a destiny of hiding. The daytime wind annoys me, with its disturbance, it'’s vengeance, it'’s enmity. The nighttime breeze is different. It doesn't seem quite as sharp, as piercing. It doesn'’t feel as mean. And the light breeze after dark carries my secrets away to wait for their rebirth, in that instant when I remember the feeling I felt so many years ago; that instant when the nighttime wind rushes through my thoughts, and for an instant I remember the embrace of peace.

I just shuttered. It's getting cold. Summer must be yielding to the inevitable ebb of the season.