ASSUMPTION

Babies are born with beautiful baby skin.
Little kids light up and run when they
spot a playground - every time.


Teenagers flirt and dance and yank
each other’s hair and back packs -
and love to laugh and give high 5’s.


Twenty to thirty nine year olders think the
whole wide world is theirs.


Forty to sixty year olders come down
to earth - their knees and backs and
schedules telling them: “There are limits.”


Sixty to seventy year olders start to stop
to look a lot deeper into the things one cannot
see or prove: God?; Meaning?; Is there
an answer to our “Why’s?” and our Cries?;
“Is this all there is?” or worded another way
as the big question: “Is there resurrection after this?”


Seventy to ninety year olders - if they
make it that far - go to more wakes
and funerals and doctors and find
themselves more and more sitting in the stands
of off to the side - some with rich smiles,
some with sad snarls or scars - or because
of hurts that never healed. Assumptions!


These are all assumptions. More or less….
Isn’t this the way it is for everyone?
Faith and hope are assumptions as well as
words - in the first half of life. In the second half
they are decisions. Walls? Doors? Christ!


Sometimes we find Jesus at the seashore
after a night of catching nothing. Sometimes
he’s just standing there and like a little kid
spotting a playground we can run to him.


And then there is Mary - Perpetual Help -
the One who is always on the edge of the wedding
or standing in the crowd or along the way
or under the cross - the Sorrowful Mother.


In life she, like Jesus, was aware of neighbor,
those who ran out of wine or bread.
Life: sometimes it's fullness, sometimes it's emptiness,
and sometimes it's in between ….


In death, Jesus and Mary are pictured for us
on walls of churches as well as in art museums,
two who became more and more aware of the Father
as they came home to His embrace.
At least that’s our assumption.
At least that’s the assumption called “faith”.


And so to sum some of this up: First things first….
We go from baby skin to wrinkles,
from dash and flash to sitting and pondering.


It seems we have to become aware of all
the other things first - before we become aware
of the great assumption: Resurrection - the
stepping not into the grave but into the
Eternal Dance - the full Wedding Feast -
dancing with each other - with Jesus and Mary
with Eternal Bread, Eternal Wine on our Holy Breath.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2011