Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Skeleton and the Treasure

Questions are the barely to the side of the sweet spot ricochet off the bat that becomes a pop fly into center field where as a boy I waited. Feeling the blood run cold then hot through my suddenly knotted legs cocked like the hammer of a gun, I stared into the sky squinting to find the dot hiding within the suns intensity. Catching it would be a victory forgotten. Dropping it would be an error remembered. I don't remember a single catch. I remember vividly every drop. As the mystery unfolds, wisdom increases, experience stacks up for better or worse, questions are sun blinded pop flies or scorching line drives that collectively come like a tsunami. The spray from the tidal wave that makes me squint and moistens my lips before the wall that follows knocks me from my steady footing, of wisdom, of compassion, of faith, of family, of love. They never stop, like the ticker at the bottom of the newscast, and sometimes I just have to choose to look away. Because unless the answers affect choice that produces productive action, they just torment you. Questions are neither right nor wrong, but rather are the shovel that penetrates the carefully nurtured landscape of your world to uncover the treasure, or the skeleton, or the skeleton holding the treasure, beneath the surface of who you think you are. And all they want, is to know, and so do I.