Men Of Renown

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Genesis 6:7 KJV

Some decades ago so my highschool sat at the edge of town. If you drove a little further so straggled some housing, though inevitably an open plain swallowed the road.

I imagined this translucent bubble between the school grounds and periphery. Whether a membrane against pathogens or soon fatal, if you walked up to the chained fence the plains stared back. I could hear it greet me.

On holiday breaks I’d trace a bike through the bus path and, as though I’d finally break out of the rails set in me since preschool, I’d cross the line. The plains up close sunk in my mind. The plains began to peel away the institutional tutelage and “living” as it was in these times.

All cliques so common in the day, all motor vehicles whizzing by, I began to see the turquoise cloud about it and its little sparks of suggestions, its skylight beam toward the central power. All the way to London.

I parked my bike and sat at the edge of the road, beyond the grassy and dried horizon. This is where our true God resides, surely. My clothes transformed into robes, and a patchy beard into full. The rickety fence rolled itself up, and the plains called out to me once more to come join.

I turned away then, and all the dust of the transformation scattered in the howl of wind. With a bit of adrenaline I mounted the bike and fled toward the membrane.

Ever since that day I waited between the intermissions, hands loosely grappling the fence. I waited for the plains to greet me again.

But I know I must go out there fully. All the machinery means nothing if I’m a gear in its orchestrations. Because it’s not about being a man of renown, but walking where divine dwells.

The plains give you the blank blueprint for you to walk in. Here is where the garden begins.

Waiting for you to fill it in.