Three Hearts

I co-facilitate a writers' group for senior citizens twice a month. During one of our Tuesday meetings, I read the following piece for them to critique.

I heard it said once that every one has three hearts. The first heart is the one kept in the mouth. This is the heart one shares with all of the strange world. The second heart is found in the chest. This is the heart known only to those one loves and trusts. Then, there is the third heart. This heart is a mystery, hidden outside of one's self or deep within, that one spends their life trying to find. I catch glimpses of this third heart of mine in blank pages of paper. I try and write what I see and this third heart grows more elusive.

"It's good, but it's not finished," one of the women said. "I mean, are you ever going to find your third heart?" I

smiled. "I sure hope so."

Traffic Stop

I grabbed a drink with an old friend of mine last weekend. He works as a police officer in a nearby county and we got to talking about the excuses people give when they're pulled over for speeding.

"The best one I've ever heard," he said, "was from this young kid I pulled over doing forty-three in a thirty. I had just been in a bad mood all day so I sauntered up to the driver's side and said, 'Son, I've been waiting for you all day.' The kid smiled a little and replied, 'I'm sorry, Officer. I got here as fast as I could.'" My friend, the young police officer, laughed. "The kid made me laugh, made my day, really, so I let him off with a warning."

At Night in Chang Mai

At night in Chang Mai the streets are flooded with young children selling flowers and palm leaf crickets. They run around to gain a few more cents of income for their impoverished families. As you can imagine, it's quite hard to turn them away. By the end of the night I am always covered in Orchids.

One night a little girl around three years old tottered up to our table and silently lifted her flowers. I smiled at her and asked, "Sabai dee mai?" (How are you?) as Kelly handed her 10 bht. She responded with a huge smile and then proceeded to stick the coin in her mouth as she walked away. She was so excited she forgot to give us the flower.

Contributed by Aryn.

Awakening

I woke up this morning to find the outdoors blanketed in snow. My first reaction was, "Brrrr. Winter is here." Then I saw the beauty of scene and how it covered up the dirt and mess underneath and, like a flash, I was reminded of how Christ's shed blood clothes believers in pure white which covers up all the dirt and mess in our lives. And, thinking of that instead of "Brrrr," a great warmth flowed through me and I felt His immeasurable love.

Contributed by Gwyn.

A Close Encounter of the Best Kind

Three year old Hope was standing on a chair in her little bare feet coloring in her coloring book at the table as this tired old lady walked into the house.

Her dark eyes broke into sparkles as those smiling eyes looked at me while calling, "Gramma Becky! Gramma Becky!" and both she and I sat down together. Looking at me intently, she asked, "Where you been, Gramma Becky?"

"At my house," I replied.

Those wise eyes looked at me with a knowing look on her face. "Me too," she said.

Contributed by Becky.

Home

I used to chat up my math professor in Duluth for an hour every day after class in an attempt to charm my way into passing Calculus.

He was telling me one afternoon how stressed he was over planning an RV trip out to Yellowstone for his family flying in from the Czech Republic the following week. He stopped suddenly and pointed to a white board on his wall filled with mathematical equations. "That," he said, "That is home to me, Eric." He sighed. "I am not much good at anything else. I tell you this because you write and you must know what I mean."

I smiled a little. "Yeah, Dalibour. I guess I do."

Breakfast in Bed

The following is a poem my mother wrote about my niece bringing me breakfast in bed.

Who's Knocking?

Tap, tap, tap at your door.
It's not the Raven squawking "Nevermore!"
Pixie Emma face alight
Offering blueberry braided bread upright.
Illuminating sunshine and morning cheer
Aromatic coffee she offered here.
Beseeching you to awake and visit.
No way could you resist!
Groggily smiling at this tiny vision
Who'd proudly completed her mission-
Breakfast in bed
Nothing more need be said.

Paint-by-Numbers

I ran into an old friend of mine in Elk River, yesterday. She told me the following story.

"So my aunt called like a week ago. She was in Wal-Mart and she says something like: 'I just had to call you and tell you what I did today. I bought a paint-by-numbers kit. I figured my husband is at work all day and my sons are in high school so they're never home, so I bought a paint-by-numbers kit.'

"So I asked my uncle about it this weekend and he laughed. 'Yeah,' he said, 'I come home and I see her doing this paint-by-numbers thing at the kitchen table and I ask her how long she's been doing that and she says, as casual as can be, five hours. Five hours she'd been painting by numbers.' It's funny."

From the Novel

For three years now, I have been working none-too-quietly on a novel called Vanity: A Paperweight or Mea Culpa. Below, I am posting something I wrote today.


"I was in love once," The Monk chuckled. "With a yoga instructor in New York City. She taught at the YMCA."

"How'd that work out with your oath of celibacy?" I asked.

The Monk smiled. "I wasn't entirely celibate then."

"You dog! How was she? Limber, I'll bet."

"It never went that far." The smile dwindled from his face. "I took her out for coffee once. I spent all day begging for spare change on the street corner in order to afford
it. She talked about how badly she wanted to know God."

"Did you show her?" I asked.

"I tried. I wasn't able to talk with God like I can now; She had too much going on back then." The Monk rested his head against the lead-lined concrete wall.

"What did you do then?" I stopped pacing and sat on a crate full of rations.

"Strange how I can remember it so clearly. I asked her if she had a compact and if she did, could I see it? She dug around in her bag--it was a big gym bag, we had just come from the Y--and
handed it to me. I opened it up, held the mirror in front of her face, and said, 'You see that? That is God.' She laughed at me. She said she thought God should have a smaller nose." The Monk sighed. "So my love was an unrequited one."

"The easiest kind," I said.

The Monk laughed. It was the first bitter laugh I had heard come out of him. "I hadn't thought of it that way. It felt like hard work at the time."

Torah Tricks

I met up with a former professor of mine at a joint off Snelling and Larpenteur last week. Over beer, I told him about my vision-quest across America, including my stay in Brownsville, Texas.

"Did I ever tell you about the Rabbi from Brownsville?" Professor S. asked.

"No. I don't think you have."

Professor S. laughed. "Well, I was at this Biblical education conference with a friend of mine, a Baptist minister I used to teach with." I raised an eyebrow. "Don't ask how I know him," he continued, "It's a long story. Anyway, we were talking on the steps of this desolate building on campus, playing hooky from whatever we were supposed to be doing at the conference, and this Rabbi from Brownsville finds us. He was playing hooky, too. He tells us some of his life story. He was this exile from New York, still had the Bronx accent, running what I can only assume is a small synagogue in Brownsville.

"We asked him about the conference and he said, 'Everything they're trying to teach us here is bullshit. If you really want to get the kids to learn Torah, you know what you use? Card tricks.' And he pulls a deck of cards out of his pocket and shows us a couple tricks. It was amazing. This vaudevillian Rabbi in Brownsville explaining, 'You do a couple card tricks, you mix in some Torah here and there, and you got 'em.' "

Professor S. laughed again. "So now you know why I tell so many jokes in class. While you're all laughing--Bam!--I throw in some Torah and you never know what hit you."