Day 3

My father once told me that life is a question that demands an answer. But I was still grappling with the questions of time and eternity, there certainly were no answers on the horizon.

I can’t recall when it happened, or even who put the question within me. I don’t even remember answering, but at some stage in my life I did answer, “yes” to someone or something and from that moment I felt that my life did have meaning. That there was a purpose before me somewhere and that I must begin a quest in search of the answers to life’s great questions. Someone or something had put eternity into my heart. However, as you can appreciate for an 18-year-old, while probing the immensities of eternity, I was also often plagued by the pain of romantic dreams and desires for some divinely beautiful softening creature that had captured my attention.

And so it was that I often sat beneath the evening star, with quiet steps that wandered far, and there mingled with the meaning of life were the troubled sunbeams of love. So often they became the shinning memories of the past, withering as a fragrant rose. As a young man aged 18 my quest for meaning was often confused with my longing for romantic love. Relationships came and went, while the most desirous were unrequited.

University was a wonderful place of mental freedom. A social explosion, a philosophical smorgasbord. The feast was extensive but the satisfaction lacking.
Who was it that kept the padlock of silence on my desire for knowledge? Not knowledge of the sciences or mathematics or the arts, but knowledge of the meaning of life, knowledge of the one eternal being that haunts the heart of every being, knowledge of the one who could fill my void and satisfy my soul.

While at university I had a favorite spot beneath a willow tree beside a river. It was there that I often ransacked the silence, but like the moon was often caught by the morning, diminished and alone. Was the keeper of this knowledge not going to share? I listened to the soft breeze breathing through the branches, while the moon reflected its light from the water. While searching the meaning of the stars I also looked for the words to woo my love…

Oh moonbeams, Oh moonbeams Spread me some light,
Show me some words
That will bring her in sight.
The moon was quiet.
Caught in the branches of the willow,
Time stood.

Naked against the night,
The stars talked
But I could not hear.

In the magic of the moment, when the mood of the moon’s reflection on the waters left a longing in my soul for the words that would capture her heart, the willow did nothing more than whisper. It whispered, in a language I could not understand, to the river in the valley as it passed. Sun and moon, sun and moon, bore the burden of my heart, I loved a dream both temporal and eternal. If He had never called I would never have searched. If she had never looked at me I would never have loved her, nor would I have been stung by the splendor of that sudden thought that she may love me. She was however attached to another for the moment. And so I chased the glowing hours. I looked to the skies, probing its immensities and there I heard the whispering of eternity and the voice of God. Mingled with the sentiments of love were the longings to find meaning, but often I was caught by the morning, cold and alone and in love, but lacking the meaning in it all.