“Maybe that’s gift of the meek,” he spoke, “to sense the unsaid, discern the unshown; recognition and affinity toward other souls that seem, in way, similar to ours; an understanding outside ability to explain, but to know and believe it so.” He paused, cautious, aware to vulnerability in such speaking, and followed, “Then again, maybe it’s all imagined, a way to dream romance and connection for lives lived greatest within the interior castle of self and spirit; all its chambers, beauty and wonders and gifts within, rarely shared or seen.”
She listened, contemplation telling through present, but distant, eyes as she considered as he spoke.
“But shouldn’t there be more?” she questioned. “If left as only sense and perception—nothing shared, acted on, or known beyond—is that not a waste of empathy and affections? What’s the point for their presence?
She looked to the sky, to golden sun, like eye, discerning through frame of clouds; lavender shadows of rain and changing winds painting beneath as light fanned in spread across the sky.
“Maybe we aren’t meant to stay in our castles—forever safe in guards and walls, dreaming what exists beyond, if we only risked to seek. Maybe we’re meant to get out of our minds; leave the walls we see as safety that, never abandoned, become imprisonment of will; and what we imagine as gift and grandeur of dream is, in truth, distraction and deterrent from ever seeking what waits to be found and lived. In comfort and safety of dream, we never risk to make it true.
Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, if we are never challenged to grow or change, act on sense, discernments; affections and affinities that move us.”
A wind stirred. As clouds and front of changing sky neared, the drawing in of front turned, pressing then winds back, forward in advance of arriving opening of storm.
“That doesn’t sound like a meek spirit,” he spoke, smiling, enjoying sight and side and opening to chamber of interior castle, of her, never seen.
“No,” she answered, wind stirring and blowing into face as they gazed on its approach. “Maybe we’re not meant to stay as we are. Maybe even the meek, especially the meek, have something to say and show and live—and will—when time and place and with whom its shared is right; a lifetime of thinking what to say, and finally speaking when moment affections tell.”
Front built; clouds rising as fortress in the sky, rise and shape of great cumulonimbus changing before eyes into battlements and tower—formidable and harsh—but through the cloud-stone, hewn slits for sight through which golden light shot striking in cast and reach before the storm, its lavender beneath darkened into violet and shadow-grey.
“A castle’s a lonely place to hide away,” she told, “when there is so much in the world you wish to see; and so much in ourselves, we wish to share.
Maybe to sense and discern, to the shy and meek, are gifts; but gifts becomes burdens when hid instead of lived as they were meant.”
Thunder broke, deep and bellowing in roll as wind and first of rain spoke shone in approach over open pasture, waving and bending, sounding with rustle and then falling of the rain.
“It’s scary to step outside,” she told, “or to let another in, but it’s the only way to find or make a dream that we discern.”
A chill struck, causing sudden shudder through each when and as they rested; and after, she laughed in smile, guard of eyes showing breaks like fortress cloud before as she returned in stare and study of him—light cast and telling through their guarding—as rain arrived to them in place, neither racing for cover but staying open to rain and storm: life and experience immersed and open to tempest and winds of world; neither retreating into hide and guard of castles.
To be vulnerable, open—to gifts and burdens; storms and sun; caprice and destiny; to guidance of both God’s and one’s own will—is to live.
Holding and keeping as storm broke around; they shared free beyond prisons of long-kept castles.