Lamar Howell's Weblog

I come to Vrindivan

not to live, but to die.

My head is shaved,

my jewelry sold for rice

and a white sarape.

I am one of ten thousand widows here.

They say those who die in Vrindivan will not return

to live again and suffer.

I want this deliverance

Next to rice

it is my greatest desire.

I remember my old life in the village

I had my home and a husband

my mango tree

Ponds, all full of fish.

I had everything

Now, I am forgotten

But I have my dignity

I am worth a hundred of my relatives

I am happiness itself

Happiness is my other name.

O Lord, help me

Hare, Hare Krishna

What am I to do?

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I must love you my God more than sin, more than secret lies, more than false relationships. Launch a probe into this mystery cloud of nebulous humanity that is me, neutralizing every signal of carnal energy emitting from the force of ego. Change my time-warped insides and make space for you. I open this dark lost ship to your search party. I’m sending out a beacon in this prayer, a homing signal to Abba, my God and friend.

. . . boarded, somewhere in the asteroid belt.

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The bus stopped near the train station in Warsaw, Poland. As I struggled to carry my toddler son and an umbrella stroller while navigating through the exiting crowd, someone behind me slipped my wallet from my pocket. My credit cards, license, cash– all gone.   We went into the train station with only a US quarter to our name. I had to go to the restroom but had no money to use the sink to wash my hands.  I was breathing in trust, breathing out hope.  As I was leaving the bathroom I saw a metal bucket on the floor, catching drips from a leak in an overhead pipe. I stopped to stick my hands under the transparent living flow–falling in freeze-frames from heaven–and looked up just in time to see the Holy Spirit do that slo-mo swan-dive.

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No one I know was born today, none met their fate. No war started nor any treaty signed. No one sworn into an office or invented or created a thing–that I know of.

But today marks a place in time and in my personal history where I stopped. To listen to God. To contemplate the highest good and deepest truth, the purest speech from the most assured source–and weakly ask for change, to be awakened to it all, or to any worthy part, a kernel to plant in my heart. A stirring, a blowing, a brush of His finger across the brow of my soul.

I wish I could be real, for once, completely and irreversibly bare and naked and childlike–and totally longing before my God. Christ was stripped, poured out, abandoned for me, but . . . for my pitiable safe, cool response?

Save me! If I were crucified beside him, would I then feel, and understand? If all I could say is “remember me,” could I say it with a crushed heart? Why, my dearest God, can’t I?

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