Ask me if I remembered to get my coffee, turned the furnace down, put the hearing aids in, or remembered what I came to get at the store….hmmmmm you might get a blank expression. Maybe not so much blank as it is uuuuuhhhhhhhhhh. Yet, ask me to remember two dates, two specific dates, and yep, the expression would be quite different.

I think, perhaps, we’re all like that. Some events simply sear themselves into our bodies. If we’re patient and open, another will come along. Like matching bookends they will fit together. Maybe like these bookends, the second date may be broken. They fit. Just not the way we would’ve hoped. With grace, another date comes and seats itself in between. We may still not understand the two events, we may still wonder why, sweet mercy, why. Like the raised leg of the “h” in the ‘why,’ a tiny flame sits. We sit and give thanks for the light and the flame melting the wax of ‘why.’

This week, the  candle was lit between two such dates. I sat and pondered the light, the melting why and brokenness that somehow, now, seemed to fit. And the whisper emerged with a laugh and smile. Curiosity. To simply be curious. No longer judgement. No longer the hands raised in unknowing. Just curiosity. It was. It is. Life is curious. Life is filled with laughter. Oh, I had wanted to create an image that would portray much more. Perhaps an image that would amend my lack of wisdom and words. An image that would blister the heart with hope when other’s bookends seem broken and empty. Such pondering waved the white flag to curiosity and laughter.

Two dates. April 12, 1971. April 14 decades decades later.  Bookends of desperation and broken hope. In between, April 13, 2016, almost eight years after the second bookend, forgiveness, parole, and life begins. Anytime we can mix those three, laughter will appear. Whispered grace and awe’s version of disbelief – disbelief transformed into Disbelief. The disbelief of why becomes the Disbelief of grace. And that, I laugh, is as profound as I need.