Lamar Howell's Weblog

Tuesday I went to the doctor and came away with a bad report . . . again.

So, here I go . . . again, contemplating my mortality. It seems contradictory that one who consistently dwells on the eternal things of heaven thinks equally about dying.

Perhaps it’s because I have stood a few times on the narrow edge of the ridge that thinly separates two worlds, two opposing realms. One tangible; one surreal. One a camera-ready landscape; the other, a faintly visible mist – a  haze which hides the certain and sudden drop. I have waited there. Wondering, indecisive, teetering, phobic of the height. But ultimately I have always leaned into the gently breathing wind back toward the known, safe world – the fallen, decaying, unsure, terminal life – and away from the buoyant, unchanging, certain Everlasting.

But something strains at me like a nagging school marm, reminding me of my C minuses and bad conduct grades in morality. I know those failures have been blotted out of my record in mystical red tincture, but I keep wondering if the charges will bleed through the more I try to forget them by accidentally thinking about them.

So, I will mark my calendar, and spend only Tuesdays with mortality.