Of Tears, Refraction and Constants

She was sitting in the row in front of me, a couple of seats to my right. The light reflecting from the tear on her cheek caught my eye. Her head was bowed, but then she looked up. And tried to smile that kind of smile that can only be smiled when there is a tear reflecting from on the cheek. And the white-haired lady sitting to her right was trying to console her. Found her a tissue. But the tissue was used only to blow the nose. For it seemed that the tears were an essential essence of her expression of grief. And she was not a petty lady. Rather, a beautiful lady. And it was her turn to need consoling in the sacred space of that church.

I could turn, and look toward my left. Through the entire wall-expanse of glass. Could hardly discern the separation of the sacred space within the church from the sacred space of the canopied natural foliage of protective forest on the outside.

And between the optimist, upward-looking petals of the dogwood trees in my view, and me . . . was a small table with lighted candles, representing the silent joys and concerns of the congregants.

And the dogwood flowers would shimmy and shake. Refract, bend. Go into, come out of focus. But that effect was seen only in the columns of heated air above each small lighted candle.

And our joys and our concerns do change things. Change our perceptions. Change our patterns. Change how we see things.

And they change us.

For it was two weeks ago I sat in that sacred space. It was my tears refracting the light from my cheek.

And my grief was a horrible grief of the realization that I might have lost that what I so hoped was going to make me complete.

I didn’t even have the strength to light a candle of sorrow on that occasion.

But today, the lens of the heated air, bending those dogwood flowers, was from a candle that I had lit.

A candle of joy.

For joy!

For earlier this morning, another note from the one whom I thought I had lost forever.

And he described his unifying theory of our destiny.

In terms of calculus! In terms of the summation of two constants . . . k.

In terms of our bondage. My bondage in denying for most of my life that I am gay. My ability to finally escape from the closet, and escape from that bondage. His bondage of not needing to escape, for he accepted his being gay from the beginning. But his bondage in the wanting of a soul-mate. And so his first constant is a constant (k) of bondage.

In terms of seeking. My seeking, his seeking, our seeking, of companionship, of soul-mate commune. And so his second constant is a constant (k) of seeking.

And with the certainty of Einstein, or Pascal, or Newton, or Galileo, his principle of unity is simply:

k + k = Destiny.

And though his day is four time-zones ahead of mine, his spiritual experience at his place of worship had already come and gone . . . as I watched the shimmering dogwoods above my lighted candle of joy . . . I breathed little prayers of thanksgiving for the sacred spaces that console the glistening tear of joy on my cheek, and on his cheek.

And as the service came to an end, as we stood to leave that sacred space . . . the beautiful lady with the tear on her cheek . . . her eye caught mine.

And for the first time in a long time, I had the internal radiance to smile.

And she smiled back at me.

The Refectory Manager