A Note: Usually, I enter the New Year with a sense of power, confidence and the ability to achieve great things and I would inevitably draw up a list of resolutions, dreams, strategies... But 2010 was different. The year was one of the most challenging that I faced and through it all I came to realize that no amount of strategies could have produced the results I got. God was with me when I "walked through the valley of the shadow of death" economically, spiritually, physically and emotionally - when all seemed lost. He delivered me from all manner of snares. For once on a New Year's eve, I was overcome by a great sense of my mortality, a fear that with each passing year, the hour glass of my life seems to run out faster... I went over the eternal question that I believe generations before me have posed: Have I fulfilled even a tenth of the purpose for which I was born and for which I have traversed this earth over the last decades? That day when I shot through my mother's birth canal, a crying, helpless mass of blood and flesh ... the journey began for me as it does for every individual; for every human person. I was completely overwhelmed by the realization of my finiteness in this awesomely vast, precious and beautiful universe. I asked myself if over the decades I have set the right priorities? Have I loved, laughed enough? Have I shared my life with others? Have I shared my knowledge and experience to guide others? Have I written all the books and poems I have longed to write? Have I seen the most beautiful sunset yet; enough to melt even the stoniest heart? have I enjoyed the fragrance of wild flowers at night, set the stars alight, waltzed under the moonlit sky? Have I brought up my children right? When I take the last bow on life's stage, will there be a standing ovation in heaven and on earth? Will I leave a mark, a dot, a memorial on my infinitesimal little spot on the highway of time?
Naked I Stand
I tremble, vibrations rock my feeble frame
Awe-struck
Before your majesty
Creator of the heavens and earth
I stand naked
No veneer of cover upon
My naked frame
You wrench of every vestige of hypocrisy
Like a whirlwind, violent, intense, directed
You tear off every shred of pretense
Every human-invented cover
Every veneer of civilized woman
Righteousness like rags, filthy
Naked I stand
But even that is not enough
You separate muscle from muscle
Vessel from marrow
Bone from sinew
Fiber from tendon
Until nothing
Absolutely nothing remains
hidden from your knowing
From your all-seeing gaze
I tremble the more
I am weak and cold
For I know that you know
Just when I think it is over for me
Naked I came
To return to the elemental
To dust
You extend a hand
Endless, eternal
Rock of ages
You whisper, “Come”
“For I have loved you with an everlasting love”.
