Today I spent hours organizing my words. In Gmail alone, I created folders and tags and placed nearly 21,000 emails in their respective cyber-spaces. It was daunting.
I need to continue. I sense a shift taking place within me, within the church I serve, and even, within increasingly larger circles of people with whom I interact or who I observe from a distance. It is as if we are collectively saying, Enough. We will figure this out. We will reach toward each other. We will find ways to live in peace.
It’s like clouds shifting gently in the sky, giving way to beauty that calls you by name.
This growing sense of community and hope is so strong that I feel called to prepare so that I might use my words to function within it as well as possible; it is a privilege and a joy to be called to find and proclaim Good News in a time when people seem to especially long for it. It’s a time in which I’m increasingly aware of the power of words and the ability they have to change the world by the ripples they create.
It was an unexpected reward then today, when I found some of Chase’s writing from his Sophomore year of high school. As he begins his Sophomore year at Ohio Wesleyan, it seems fitting to invite you into the rewarding experience of reading some of his words in one of his earliest poems. I just might get it written on one of my walls now that I live by the sea where the clouds change as often as the waves. I don’t know how he could’ve described them any more completely. Savor it; perhaps even read it aloud as I did. I dare you not to smile.
If I Were A Cloud
I would wander but I already do
I’d have another excuse to gaze at you
I’d spit rain and absorb evaporation
I’d turn into a dragon by means of imagination
I would be mammoth
and I would cast shadows
I would stand still with time and discuss box scores
I would be fluffy and probably pale
and over your beautiful face cast a veil
and amidst all this I think I’d find time
to gaze at the ground and wish it were mine.
to wish, to lust, to want to be free
to swim with the fishes and you in the sea!
–by Chase Montana Smith, 9/6/2010
