Still Digging up tears from July 2001.

Sunday July third, 2005 Robert a young man that I hardly knew was gunned down a block from where I live. At first I find myself numb to these kind of realities. Then there comes the car wash on the weekend to help pay for the funeral. Seeing the signs advertising a car wash for Robert and getting a call from Jude on her cell telling me that she was at the car wash, sent my soul on a journey towards the next layer of release. (Witnessing trauma can often delay and extend the grieving process; I have not only witnessed trauma, but know over 20 people who have died since 2001.)

My soul stayed troubled all day. All things are not right with the world. Explosions in London highlight this fact. This deep sense of tension between what is and what ought to be starts to boil up in my soul. I have trouble sleeping and decide to watch a movie. I have the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy and decide to select scenes out of “The Return of the King”. After an hour of skipping forward to some of my favorite scenes I come to the end when the company must truly part and say goodbye for the last time. I sob for half an hour. Finding the release I needed, finally I could rest. This seams to be a healing door for me. “Blessed are they that Mourn for they shall be comforted.” I am like a lot of guys who have been taught not to cry. The themes in Tolkien’s, “Lord of the Rings” have helped me since I first read the novels in sixth grade. I have read them so many times that I am sure my mind fills in gaps in the movie. Meaning and sacrificial love go hand in hand; the way we give our lives away every day... that is what becomes the meaning of our lives.

Anyone who wants to watch a good movie and cry with me sometime – let me know.

Hopefully I will get the freedom one day to not need the aid of Movies to dredge up the past but will be free to cry and rejoice and release my true feelings in a friends embrace, in seasons of parting, in celebrations of life and death, and in the communion of the saints – through prayer.