Yesterday at the Moonflower Community Market, a late 50’s-early 60’s age man, with long hair tied back into a ponytail and
dirty from a days’s work with his hands, walked into the store. Wandering about, he struck me as unusual as compared with the typical clientele, but I thought nothing of it.
He had a twinkle in his eyes as he approached me after some time. He introduced himself as “Ernest.”
“This place is great. I love that you are here. I didn’t know you were here...”
We had a brief, eye-piercing, completely connected feeling conversation, using fewer words and more body language, as he beamingly expressed his gratitude and I most delightedly mine.
He told me he was Navajo (Inui?), born and raised in the Four Corners. He lovingly called me “White Girl,” and said that he would come back some rime when he was in town. We embraced hands, then hugged, and then he left.
—-
Some hours later, Ernest walked back into the store.
I paused the conversation I was having with a well put together woman with kind eyes. He looked at me and said, “I don’t know why I’m back,” he began, “I just wanted to see you again.”
I looked in his eyes and again saw the Great Infinite, and was overcome with inexplicable and effusive joy, a lightness of being without comparison, the only physical correlate being my eyes welling with tears.
“Ernest, welcome back. You are always welcome here.”
“I don’t know why I’m back...”
“You are always welcome here...”
Our hands reached out and connected with a long embrace, as we honored One Another once again.
The woman who I had been helping check out had been waiting perfectly patiently, and she and I met eyes again.
“This is so special. Wow. So incredibly special,” she said, shaking her head seemingly in disbelief, eyes ablaze with the same fire I felt within.
“I know, thank you,” I replied.
“Thank you for letting me share in this experience with you,” she said. Here eyes were shining.
The vision went blurry as tears commenced to flood the eye plane, and I choked up.
“I hope you have a happy holiday,” she began, “but I don’t need to say it, it looks like you already...”
—
Attempting to describe this connection yesterday is like seeing a rainbow bowing down over a seemingly limitless desert plain, smelling the crisp air and breathing deeply, and then trying to capture the experience by drawing it with a black graphite pencil.
Woefully insufficient.
Words, like pen, like paint, like any countably large collection of tools available to humanity, are so insufficient to describe the ineffable Infinite Love of the Great Reality. Humbled, i stop here.
