One Thousand Years
Genesage
“Love"
(Chp 7:3)
Thomas stared into the fire watching the flames.
Flames that were consuming what was left of Rose. Flames dancing the thoughts of his mind in the flicker. He liked watching the fire. He wished though He could be as far away as the flames made him feel. He couldn’t. He was here.
The wine had helped.
The conversation that they had been having made it easy to forget the moment they were living in. He almost wished He could go there now than deal with the question Eben asked.
Thomas returned from the mental disassociations and felt the emotions boiling in his soul once again. It was easy to turn them off when distracted in the passion of the debate, but now? He could feel them roil in him. How so unlike him after all these years of quiet, to suddenly be embroiled in emotion.
Thomas who had only recently admitted who he really was.
or had he admitted?, he thought.
He certainly had been caught with his pants down so to speak and embarrassed to be called by his real name. Yet there it was. Called out by Eben Abram.
He had lived the lie perfectly. Or so he thought. He had not ever said his name. No one asked it. No one questioned him so technically he never denied his name. If they had known him before, he was sure he would have admitted who he was. Or so He told himself.
After Sixty-nine years there was no reason to remember his “old self”.
At least until Eben called him by name.
When Eben did, he felt guilty, ashamed. As if caught for something he really wasn’t too sure of what “it” was. The guilt made him “feel” guilty of the guilt he felt for something else, something more, something long forgotten.
Was there more….?, and as he thought..,
again came the image of his wife.
By the fireside he had time to think and to feel.
The flames and the wine and someone who would listen made it easy to find reality staring at him in the face of his actions. Every time the flames were seeming to die out, Eben would rise and take more branches off with that familiar crack.
Each time Eben did that, Thomas still flinched.
Thomas watched every branch as Eben fed them into the fire. All were dry. Each lifeless as dust. It had ‘changed’ so quickly. Passed from abundant life to empty husk in fleeting moments of time. Each now become fodder for the fire.
Eben was in no hurry. He knew Thomas needed time. He had already asked the question so no further asking was needed. He was patient. He had waited sixty-nine years, so now, the times they were a changin’ and so was Thomas.
He let Thomas have the time to stare in the fire to reflect and think.
Rose was a bush. His wife had been real. Rose was real. Her love was obvious and yet where was his love for his wife?
There…He had said the words.
Where was his love for his wife?
He had made the vows. He had performed all the duties. He had gone through the motions, even taken pleasure in some of them.
But seeing her face on the day she made her vow to Him…,
Could he say he felt that?
No, he could not. He admitted for the first time in his life much about his life had been a sham. A pretense. Phony. A Lie. An unfulfilled life. Unlike,
Rose.
"Was she real?"
The question seemed hollow in his own ears, thought Thomas.
"What did you See?
What did you Hear?
What did you Feel
with your own hands?"
I knew he would ask that even before he spoke,
mused Tom.
It wasn't belligerent or sarcastic but a very pragmatic way Eben treated all of life. He was direct. Here in the Kingdom it seemed to work.
What did I see?
What did I feel?
What did I handle with my own hands?
Rose.
Love.
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