My Endowment

When I was endowed last June, something shifted in me. The walls between me and the outside world cracked, and nothing has ever been the same. Especially after I return, I see others as extensions of myself. "Yes..." I say, "Of course I've always been them, just like I've always been them, just like I've always been me. Don't you remember?" Like the things you just know in dreams, the endowment kindles a memory that seems to come out of nowhere, that you didn't know before, but which you, nevertheless, have always known. We are all one. Tied together in God.

I distinctly remember looking at the brothers and the sisters in the room then, that June, and thinking "They are me, part of me body, just as I am a part of theirs." We surface into each other. Each one is my hand, my navel, my chest. All one, and the body is Christ's.

You walk through the world, afterward, changed. Everything gives a sense of nostalgia. You are home, home anywhere, everywhere. Love beckons. A light peeps out. Come on, they say, we have something to show you.

And this light, this Addams-Family hand, beckons you into another world. You see, now, yes...the world is more than you thought it was. Everything opens. Everything a veil, a veil now parted, which you can now see through. And there is light. And through the light, in the light, as the light, you are, all of you, each part of you, the parts of you scattered, in the things you see, in other people, in your childhood, all of you, all of you, now come home.

The world become beautiful again. The colors you knew in your childhood come back. You realize they were never meant to leave. The cartoons, the shiny toys, the grass, the trees, the apples, all of it, radiant as the first day, the first time, there in the Garden. You know who you are. You come home. And in that home, in that flesh, that first time, that primordial playpen, the corridors, nooks, and crannies of your primal, cosmic home, you remember, you remember, and nothing can ever be the same.

This is a time for play, a time for innocence, a time for trusting Father and Mother like you used to do. You've hidden, but you don't have to now. You can bear your scrapes proudly. Look!, you say, this is my scar, where I fell, where my body became mine. Where the blood came out. But now the blood is out there, part of the scar, no longer hidden, there for all to see. And so is everything. My face, yours, your eyes, mine, all linked together inextricably, unremittingly, all a circle, all, endlessly, a circle.

You see now! The scales have fallen from your eyes! The light comes back! Come out from hiding! I found you! No need to be afraid. Father and Mother have made lemonade, and it's time for us to go exploring in the woods out back. I'm excited: it's almost summer, and we have an eternity of worlds to explore. Come on!