Moving Foreword

She wakes up like this.

But she implores you to see past the unkempt hair, puffy eyes, and growing lines that nevertheless proudly trace the face of her perpetually whirring mind. She must admit even to herself that while she has been taught that her thoughts will leave you in awe and wonder, she often finds that they are far, in contrary, too ordinary and lackluster -- at least not enough to express in words to grace the repeated lines stretching across the pages of a moleskin journal like trophies sitting prettily on a proud parent’s shelf… not realizing, of course, that the way she values her mind reflects the way she views her self-worth. Afraid to fall for the malicious lies perpetrated by insecurities, she takes caution by putting her lips and her ears on guard to protect the labyrinth of her mind plastering its high walls with posterized images of her thwarted thoughts with the blaring caption of “Lies Non-Ingrata.”

Or at least, she tries. 

And she will continue to try because she has learned early enough that it is the duty of her body to remind the soul of its forgotten divine identity. Her body keeps the gem that bejewels her crown from losing its brilliance. Every movement in and of her body is to remind her very soul that animates it that the two are bound in a mystical marriage between the finite and infinite, the temporal and eternal, the corporal and spiritual, and the human and divine. Such dichotomies form the unified mystery of the person that she is: Both a body and a soul.

She fights to protect her soul from losing faith in what she learned as a child. Indeed, her thoughts are far too wonderful and frightening to fathom. She is a mystery far too wonderful and frightening if ever fathomed.
 
Right next to the welcome rug at the entrance to the wildly growing garden of her nous are signs pointing to contradictions, ironies, and paradoxes that define the path of her labyrinth-like way of thinking.

The maze begins with her burning desire to allow her thoughts to meet the world and the world her thoughts. This body and soul survives the disorientation of herself by constantly finding a way to make the intangible tangible and visible the invisible. She is also aware that even the things of this world have much to teach her of the indescribable nature of her Maker and his divine Trinitarian life.
So she entertains them, too in her garden. And in this place, one must know that entertaining does not equate acceptance.

Now, to your right, you will see that some of her most creative thoughts will escape her will to bring them to life like sleep on a restless summer night in an isolated corner of a tiny apartment in some city that never sleeps (because it’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit and a driver outside your wide-open window will find a reason to honk at something around 4 o’clock in the morning). Or you may turn to your left and hit a dead end corner. Therein dwell the thoughts that can never turn into words nor actions; they overstay their welcome and embed themselves in her subconscious, loitering in the back burner of her mind conjuring visions in the dark of the many places that fall between Point What-Really-Happened and Point What-Could-Have. Visitors who make their way into the chamber of her long-term memory always make dramatic exits as tears fearlessly leaping out of the windows of her soul.

The memories she cherishes the most are potpourried in their own tea bags filled with an aromatic scent of dried petals crushed from the flowers she will have received from her past, present, and future friends and lovers who will always remember her with the slightly bitter taste and the warm feelings that usually follow a sip of tea. The bitterness will come from being steeped in her own broken humanity and the warmth from being saturated with the faith, the hope, and the love that fill her cup.

Moving forward, at the heart of this maze, you will find everyone whom she loves sipping the tea of their own cup.

Take note that she carefully fills her borrowed cup (take note that it is a borrowed cup) with just enough… afraid that if too much of it spilled, it just might burn her, and not having enough could leave her ingloriously unsatisfied. She nurses her tea cup until the once steaming hot water is now just a hair above lukewarm. While she waits, she distracts herself with conversations about nothing and everything. Her preference? Just ten ounces of Goldilock’s preferred water temperature. That sounds about right. While it is exactly how she wants her cup of tea, living in this seemingly measured and calculated manner has left her cup feeling two ounces emptier. Two ounces less faithful, two ounces less hopeful, and two ounces less loving. And just a hair below the preferred warmth for her soul. She cannot understand why her cup of tea is still not… well, her cup of tea.

Truth be told, whether it be ten or twelve – it will still not be enough. Though it be her own tea party, she finds herself frequently dissatisfied.

Despite such conundrums, she sits and wonders if such an irony will ever change because she hopes it can. Her fear will strike occasionally to make her wonder about those two ounces she left out -- about what she does not have. At such times, her ears and her lips will take their post to keep her fear out of the garden. They will direct her eyes to look at the empty seats that surround her. For every empty seat, she grows increasingly and quite achingly aware of her own mortality. She immediately and reverently remembers that those who have once dined with her drank only an ounce of their tea, and still, that one ounce ended up fulfilling so much more than her ten. She humbly admits it is the loss of a guest and their absence that always bring her back to what counts.

In this paradoxical turn of events, she discovers that the secret to contentment lies precisely in being two ounces less than full. In not having enough is what makes the 'one' of those who have come before her outweigh her 'ten'. It is to be in constant need. She delights in her weaknesses as her great poverty gives her joy. She lives life holding out her cup while she waits on her garden's greatest guest who is God to shake the earth and to move her mountains in hopes of catching droplets of whatever falls out of either.

Whatever comes from anything God sets into motion floods the gates of her garden, permeates the walls of her body, and clears the pathway of her thoughts. She yearns to fill her cup with all that belongs to him, but more importantly all that he is.

As the rest of her story writes itself out, this foreword is to remind her that the meaning of her life will always answer the questions of who prefers nothing to her and whom she prefers above all.