Longing for Miracles
JOHN BENNETT
(originally sent to Bennett’s email list — sign up below for more like this)
Very few people know who I am. How could they, I’m not sure myself. And I’m not special in this regard, very few people know who anyone is. So we make up things about each other and create a world we can tolerate.
Some people who think they know who I am think I never gave the way things are a chance, they think I’ve been running wild in the streets since I was five. But that’s not true. Once I thought I wanted to be a priest and went into a seminary. Another time I spent a year in a West Point Prep School. After that I decided I should be a teacher, because I like kids. But eventually I let it all go and settled into being five years old.
I could zero in on any of these misconceptions of who I am and delve deep into it, and every time I’d end up a five-year-old. Which means that the people who see me that way see the real me, or the truest mask the real me can put on. But at the same time they disapprove of this me, because it flies in the face of the matrix of rules and regulations and unchallenged givens they cling to in order to blunt their fear of not knowing who they are.
Not until you realize that none of this matters do you realize how many masks you wear in life, and even the mask that cannot be reduced further is not you.
There is no you. What you think is you is really pure awareness taking a good look at itself in a mirror and longing for a miracle.
SEE ALSO
The birth of road rageCapitalism on a deathbed, or: Jesus was an American
In the Prophetic Essence of Visionary Courage, John Bennett Challenges & Incites
Find John Bennett’s novels, short stories, and shards at Hcolom Press. You can contact him, or get on his Shards list at dasleben@fairpoint.net. Read a review of his novel Children of the Sun & Earth here
This is an honest and critical revelation. The mirror fails us. We look through a glass darkly, longing to be known completely. Perhaps this miracle is to be known totally by something beyond ourselves…by one who has the capacity to see the world through our peculiar eyes and calls us by name.
There are times when John Bennett just nails it like nobody else. And he embeds the revelation in easy to understand terms that unfold as deeply as the reader will allow.
It’s exquisite. These realities are so often overlooked or shunted aside in the busyness of daily living.
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