Innerdialects

Jana’s head bends in tiny collar bones but her face looks upward thru the tiny window facing the sun. We have her coffee in steel tumblers, her beaten rice seasoned with coconut shreds and roasted red chilli in turmeric, curry leaf. My throat fills but the words say nothing. She is not as old as she looks, but her face! Crinkly with laughing eyes. “Never alone!” She says with thin fingers in pages of her Bible she reads like as if for the first time.

Jana needs nothing. Except to pray; when she does that it is startling. There’s the unseen in the room, and we trip into another world where mortal requests pale in the Gaze of the sacred. There is no loneliness here, and there is Belonging. You can’t imagine all that. Human emotions are cruelly honest. When Jana speaks to God, you’re included in Company that knows your heart. Here you are fully known. Understood, Taken.

She’s asking Peace, Love and oneness with God. The Bible here is just a little book, worn, torn. But It holds her, sweet captive. And my heart. Not wanting to leave. Not looking away. Fully known. Understood. Taken. Deep sigh.

Her coffee grows cold, the steel shining dusk lights in its rim. She hugs with her eyes, like a child, like a very old woman, but ageless in a Presence that does not bend with evening shadows. The Presence that has no shadow, It is 360 degrees Light, casting me in Its hold, as if for the first time.