A friend and email buddy wrote recently about her experience
and revelation in a local park where she lives. It was one of those "Aha!" moments, so she sent me an
email with the suggestion that maybe I could use it in a poem or a column.
Here is what sparked her mental and spiritual processes,
told in her own words, on which I cannot improve:
Yesterday I was at a local park
with a pond which attracts ducks/geese.
While walking around I noticed
there w(ere) “duck droppings” Yikes!
I don’t want to track any to my
car so I tried stepping around it.
When I went to the gazebo
to sit down I saw a plastic knife, like
someone knew I would need it to
clean my shoes. My friend Dianne,
came up and sat down. We
discussed the duck mess. I told her I
used the knife to clean the
crevices of my sole “soul."
That last word just popped into her head as she spoke the
homonym, and it occurred to her that there was an analogy in the
expression. That is, sometimes it is
necessary to "clean the crevices of your soul" of the nasty detritus
that can build up over time in much the same fashion as you would clean the
soles of your shoes.
Cleaning the crevices of your soul isn't quite the same,
however. You cannot use a physical
object like a knife to scrape out the filth.
Instead, you must use a metaphysical object, such as meditation, or
prayer, or confession. You must reach
inside yourself and cleanse the impurities.
It is possible for some people to perform the self-cleansing
through rituals of concentration, but for most of us there is a need for
outside help; that is where prayer comes into play. Whether or not you believe strongly in a higher power or supreme
being, there is always that hope that someone or something is overseeing and
guiding us, and that there is forgiveness when we do wrong.
I believe that Catholics have a unique means for
"cleaning the crevices of their souls" - the Confessional, where the
priest acts as intermediary between the supplicant and God.
I never studied religion, so I don't know whether or not any
other religion has that means of
cleansing, or forgiveness of sins.
We Protestants sometimes joke that Catholics have it easy; they can sin
all week and then get absolution on Saturday by going to Confession.
I make no secret of the fact that I am not a devout
believer, and I certainly don't practice any form of organized religion. Yet I
am convinced that we all have a (hole? crevice?) in our soul where sin resides
that begs forgiveness and redemption.
And none of us is so perfect that we cannot use a good cleaning of the
crevices from time to time. A good cleaning might prevent it from becoming a crevasse, too.
Now, as to that poem...
