Definitions change with ages as do realities with time but...
Listen to the quiet of the night.
In generations past you might close your eyes
hearing nothing but those noises that make
a spring evening it's solace
the chirp of bugs unseen, the haunting call of an owl,
the lonely call of a distant train
I imagine those things within the quiet of a faded lost night.
I close my eyes and what do I hear?
The continual whir of a furnace, the ceaseless scratchings of a hard drive,
the cacophony of a television in the distance. All unwelcome intrusions
to the quiet of the night. Silence is dead and no one mourned
except soul and sanity which ache with the loss.
Our world seems to be passing from the real to the surreal
mass and density exchanged for digital and phantasmagorical.
The tender "how are you" heard on a patiently dialed phone
The rich timbre of a familiar voice of comfort
supplanted by 2-d text on a cold flat screen or
hissing messages on an answering machine
Consider and compare...
Sitting by a meandering stream with your feet immersed
redirecting the flow of the crystal clear water
beneath a godlike sun...
Sitting in a swiveling office chair, in cubical world,
beneath sterile lights of florescence. Need I go on?
It seems an palpable sham, a deal done in ignorance
Who would trade life for death for no cause?
Yet, we trade true living for life in cold closed boxes.
What is the difference?
We should feel ashamed being hoodwinked like that.
At some point, at some time we bought into a lie.
The creations of the world reach out to The Creator
with all that makes them. But what of us?
We make our own worlds of counterfeit stuff
filled with things that mock the miraculous.
Definitions and realities may change with the ages
but what is true and real is impermeable like the Rock of Ages.