THE GATEKEEPER
Francis Percy
It was the beginning
After the evening service had ended she sat back down in the pew as the others near to her were walking away, now weak and beginning to tremble from the swelling grief that she could no longer contain caused by the stumble she had known the night before when the music and the smoke and the drinks were too much to keep her out of the bed that was there in the room above the room of the first sorority party she would attend with almost everyone new to her except the one she had known from elementary school until now, whose hand she had first held, with whom she had shared the first kiss, in whose car she had first explored feelings of sensual pleasure yet still until now had honored her dream of waiting until she was married. Now in the quietening solitude of the sanctuary the sorrow caused by not being in a disciplined state to wait until became more than she could contain and it overflowed. She began to shake and then to sob without restraint.
It was there in that way that he saw her sitting here, alone in uncontrollable grief, openly pained and distressed. He walked slowly, quietly to her wondering if there was anything he could do. There was nothing to be done. She could not be consoled. He would never ask her why. So he sat in silence beside her as though to help her cry. He knew her, had seen her before, had watched her, and he remembered how it had felt. She had probably never noticed him before.
His kind, gentle presence softened her grief. After a while the sorrow having been given a voice and tears, it began to retreat back into the darkest corner of her soul where it would remain until the end. She asked if she could give him a ride back to the campus. As she drove along in the Catalina to the university he searched for words to say, a way to bring her to preservative, a way to help her to continue. He spoke of the need for fulfillment and how everyone sometimes does things they do not want to do; how everyone sometimes does not do a thing they want to do. Then they were there, in the parking lot of his dormitory. He reached across and took her hand and said a prayer. Their lives would never be the same after that.
About him
He was always popular, always had been kind and sensitive. His older sister was a talented academic and basketball player, and he was mostly at first known as her brother. Yet after her graduation he had become an individual. He was not ever great at anything and yet he was really good at many things. His curiosity with mystery and morality caused him to know that he would need to find some mandate to follow, some example to hold before him when situations would come in which he would have to make a decision about how he would continue. He wanted more than anything to be a good human. He took for his model the life and teaching of the prophet of Nazareth to be his guide. And so in the religious setting defined by his parents the man from Galilee became for him his hero.
In the meager yet comfortable family life provided by his parents who both were school teachers he had opportunity to reflect and fantasize. The patterns of life he saw around him were divorced from the pattern of life he heard about while in the rural segregated church he often attended. And so it was that in this context he constructed a source, a collection of guidelines that he would use to examiner every choice possible for him in the future. The character of the prophet which was defined by the religious community wherein he was immersed became his reference. It would dictate the pattern of living he would pursue.
From the most insignificant to the highest consequence, each decision was measured by a carefully calculated standard. In all of his activities and speculations the same intention motivated him. He would always guard against anything that would risk his health both physically and emotionally and spiritually. And although he would not hesitate to know and associate with persons whose manner of self-expression differed from his preference, he would continue in conforming to his proscribed arrangement. He was admired, respected, purposeful, consistent. Everyone who knew him knew what to expect from him.
About her
The red brick two-story schoolhouse she attended just down the street from the attractive white frame house where she lived had been made familiar to her by the activities of her older sister. She and her younger sister would often go there to play and to pretend. They would also eventually graduate from this high school. She would leave behind her a testimony of expressive engagement and noteworthy achievement.
She was quiet and attentive, extremely capable and with diverse capacities. Her potential exceeded that of her classmates, even that of most other students in the school. She excelled in every challenge given to her. Whether in the classroom or on the playground she drew attention and admiration. From academics to music she displayed enormous talent, having the top scores and playing and singing with precision. She was not just good; she was great at everything she had an interest in pursuing.
With her family she regularly attended the church in the small city where her mother taught Sunday bible classes and her father served with respect, being well known as the expert landsman that befitted his vocation. As she grew in years and maturity and experience she searched for a precise pattern of living that would satisfy her inner longing to be faithful and true while managing the emerging sensations, a measure that would become for her a standard for devising what was good and right in attitude and thought and behavior. From fantasy and impressions around her she constructed a picture of what she wanted her life to be about and how she wanted to relate and express herself to others. Her childhood dreams became refined and distinctive, and served as a blueprint for how she would prepare herself to experience the future.
About them
She had found a friend; he had found the embodiment of an anticipated vision of companionship. That it was not a reasonable association did not serve to dissuade his obsession. He was good; she was great. It was that simple.
As the days in the university passed the two of them were brought together in settings composed by their mutual interests. At programs sponsored by the YMCA, at university choir practice sessions, and in campus religious settings they would visit casually, talking of conditions impacting their lives, of challenges, of plans. At the church where they were before he would usually be in the choir and she would often times be sitting in the sanctuary with the one she was pre-engaged to be with. Here he would always look for her and when he saw her he would gaze at her craving some recognition–a smile, a connection with her eyes–and she would usually acknowledge. And that was for a long time the extent of their friendly expression.
Then toward the end of their academic training their friendship changed. She gave him a book and inside the book was a note of gratitude and bewilderment. He read and re-read the hand-written note that he still holds and cherishes.
Eventually, after much time had passed he would find a way to respond, a note of his own writing to her, to answer according to the way their lives had been prepared and served.
He asked her to go with him to a movie and she accepted. And while there he reached across and took her hand, again. Afterward they were together like this many times. Then one night while sitting together in his car beside a dark deserted roadway came the impossible confession. She said I love you. What prompted this confession is still unknown. It was not entirely unexpected for there was a depth of caring between them. He told her he wanted her to be his wife. He believed this was a promise of their future together. Yet history would not provide a way for them to live into their deeply held emotional attachment.
After the academic courses were completed she graduated at the top of her class; he was third from the bottom. He was set to go to the war and she was deliberating about her vocational opportunities. Then the letter arrived. He kept it unopened for several days until he was away on the airplane to Hawaii where we would serve as a youth counselor during the summer. As he read the letter he knew in his soul the torment she had known while there in the pew at the church when he first had sat beside her. In the letter she told him she was engaged to marry her high school sweetheart.
He contemplated how he would respond. He knew how she had so often struggled before with decisions that she had to made, evaluating each of the many different directions in which she could have chosen to go. Finally he said nothing deciding to honor her choice. And yet he knew inside that it did not feel right, that there was more in her deciding than he could understand. What he would not know was that she was doing this not for herself but for him. She knew what he expected, what he had waited for, and she knew she could not be this for him. And so rather than deceive him she closed the gate to him so that he would need to, he would be required to continue in another way, so to find what it was that he had waited for.
She would give up on the life she wanted for the life she wanted for her friend. This is the greatest love of all.
No one can know if it was right or wrong, if this was the way they should have been. Yet it is the way they were and the way they are and the way they always will be.
It is the ending
COLORING TIME
Francis Percy
Her name was Truly Faithful. It was not the name on her birth certificate or report card or driver’s license. It was the name she called herself. It was who she wanted to be. After all these years she remembers what that has meant to her, things she did not know in the beginning. Life for her was all about what to do with each one of the crayons in the box she had been given, how to use them.
Her’s was no ordinary box of crayons. His box included only the primary and secondary colors. Her collection of crayons had colors with names you have not heard of—colors like verdigris and aubergine and icterine and cattleya. Using all the colors in her box would not be possible for most people. And even for her finding a place and time that suited each crayon could feel like an insurmountable burden. Yet this was her quest and compulsion and calling—to be truly faithful.
Now after many years have passed she still holds these crayons with care, like a sacred trust. She looks inside the box. She sees how the crayons are worn down, some more than others. She still searches for places and times for each one of them to be used. And she sees the empty space, where one crayon exists as a memory, no longer in the box, now kept only in her mind. Occasionally, under certain conditions she thinks of it. It was long ago when she used it all.
Growing up, truly faithful seemed to be a pleasing obsession. She embraced the practice of honoring the golden rule, ‘treat others like you want others to treat you.’ But for her it was an innocent pursuit. She had the capacity to believe that treating others, all others, with respect was enough. She didn’t think much about how she wanted others to treat her.
She had a way to envision perfection. And she had the crayons to paint it. With every look and every sound she drew that picture, colored it exactly. And when he measured it he was stunned. What beauty and emotion she created for him! He had no words to describe it because this range of colors was not in his box. And probably all the others who knew her felt the same way.
As the days and months and years passed Hide-n-Seek gave way to Cinderella and sweetheart dreams to lover’s lane. New sensations stirred inside her spirit and her heart. Now there was a new reality for her to live into. And being truly faithful meant so much more than it used to.
She wanted so much to paint this unfolding picture. She brought together onto this canvas the fulness of her sensitivities. And in the process the shades of glorious colors began to emerge. One serene night in the throws of passion she was lead into a scene that before she had known only in her imagination. She followed in the trusting fashion of her golden rule. But afterward the colors began to fade.
Only one crayon remained within her reach. And so she used it. But it was not the right place and time. The picture needed more to be perfect, more depth and length and breath. She tried desperately to color it. She used the crayon, all of it. But no amount of color could make up for the present mistaken.
Yet with so many crayons remaining in her future that lost color would never be missed by the others. But in her spirit and her heart she knew that at some place and time one perfect picture would remain only a dream. The color that would make the picture perfect had been all used up, and it could not be replaced. In spite of all the quests that consumed her pursuits and the many crayons she would use to paint them, vermilion would never compose her present.
So it was that Truly Faithful became a memory that belongs to another place and time. Yet dreams exceed the boundary of place and time. And in the arena of dreams colors can never be used up. Whenever he dreams of her no matter which crayon she choses to use, it always colors vermilion.
…The tree fell just as he was finishing the nest, only needing a few more strokes; he should have drawn the other roots, the essential ones he believed did not need to be there.
SPIRITUAL DRAMA REFLECTED IN NATURE
Francis Percy
I find myself wondering more often now about the sense, the purpose of reality, looking at all that has happened, being honest about what I’ve felt and how I’ve lived. I wonder what hope can be found in it, what satisfaction can be taken from it. Without the anticipation of what shall come of the reason for feelings, of the yearning to be together, I believe there can be no meaning in any of it.
My efforts to make sense of the way things happen as we live through years in the earth has produced an understanding that physical reality can be thought of as a representation, a visible pattern of more essential, more substantive enduring dynamics that are at work in the spiritual realm, the invisible experiences that we encounter that produce feelings and emotions, that this representation of spiritual factors is the primary purpose of observable reality.
Example—recently I observed the devastating evidence of storms that destroy physical elements, destruction that can be observed. This action effectively represents the emotional turmoil that occurs in the spiritual world, how we are caused to feel following disruptions in what we hold to be important concerns and aspirations about how we want our lives to unfold, what we want our lives to mean, what purpose we try to live for. More determined analysis will identify other patterns visible in the physical world that can be used to explain, to envision other spiritual dynamics.
The concept of spirit emergence, of spirts infusing, cohabiting, blending into each other can be visualized by the nature of love making, of sexual intercourse. The way and process by which physical bodies are urged to combine can be understood as a crude representation of how spirits have the capacity to combine, unite, become forged together, more than fusing together, like substances that mix together and become a newly created substance, all particles touching to form a completely different presence.
This reality I believe can be understood to be what happens when ‘soulmates’ discover each other, how their spirits innately recognize a compatible, completing, satisfying connection. When soulmate spirits ‘make love’ the act is much more than sex. Sex is the least significant activity that happens. Yet sex is the visible dynamic of what happens deep within the spiritual connection where there is forged a togetherness that enables their union, their oneness.
The feelings and emotions that translate into physical longings, yearnings, desires are the product of deeper needs for fulfillment and satisfaction. When two spirits mate in this way they are at rest because combined they are complete, therefore they become something new, something different than before. Their togetherness has created a new way of being so that when they just think of each other they naturally, effortlessly blend into each other. It is as though they pass into each other going through physical matter to become ‘we’—a wholly distinct evolution of being that exists and survives outside physical reality.
Even when separated soulmates remain together, one, essentially connected and have intercourse with each other by means of spiritual communication. Their thoughts are no longer of ‘me’ but of ‘us.’ Spiritual extension is not limited by distance, by boundaries that affect the presence of the body. Spirits have the capacity to reach into infinity, across distance and even across time.
When I think of her I envision this way of connecting with her, visualizing where she is, what she might be doing, most especially at night when I expect her to be lying in bed. My spirit comes across distance to be together with her, to join with her spirit beneath her physical being. At all time I have the perception of being in this way with her, our spirits always together, always connected, in communication and support.
But this is not a new feeling for me. When I first came to know her I felt we had this kind of connection. The way she moved into me, the intensity of my attraction to her, this was a completely new sensation. And when she wrote me that note, I believed what she said indicated she had this same sense of connection with me. This spirit connection did not produce the kind of relationship for us that I assumed it would. Yet it still is present, it still means something important to us, for us. Maybe it is understood and appreciated more perfectly now.
It is as she said, ‘not what if, but what was, is, and shall be’ …it is what it is.
Honor Freedom of Conscience 