In the dark...

Last night I mentioned that I was watching "The Pink Panther Strikes Again," with the hilarious Peter Sellers as Inspector Clousseau. Favorite scene: Clousseau is in an English Manor house as part of his investigation into the kidnapping of a professor and his daughter. Before interrogating the servants, Clousseau "takes a look around" the house and ends up walking into a room upstairs. The door opens, Clousseau goes in without turning on the light, shuts the door behind him. Total darkness. He strikes a match and starts walking, peering into the darkness. He cries out in his faux French accent, "anyone there in the dark?" Two beats later the door swings open behind him, the butler walks in, turns on the light and we see that Clousseau has been "walking" on a tread mill all along - going nowhere. I roll on the floor with laughter!

Hilarious, I think, because we, should I say, go through it all the time. The door is our future. Each day a new, unopened door. I look for the light and, well, mostly I can't find the switch. I strike whatever implement seems to be available, a call to a friend, a reassuring glance at my bank account, whatever, hoping it will supply enough light to get me to my destination. But you know, it just ain't easy.

OK, sometimes I get on the tread mill and no harm is done, just a lot of wasted energy. But more often than I like I run into a wall, trip over a chair, bump my head. It is then that I have a choice - PANIC! Or not. Is it too easy, too glib, to say that is why we need to have faith?

Belief in God is not a necessity for faith. We put out trust in lots of things, people, whatever, but the darkness, at least for me, is a place for discovering the unseen One ... when I can't see ANYTHING. It's still dark, dreadfully so. I still cry out in a shaky, try-to-be-brave tone of voice, "anyone there in the dark?" Sometimes I want to just sit down and travel no further. You, too?

So I walk. Not knowing what lurks there, I reach for a hand, one that can only really be seen in the light of the past. Oh yeah, says I to meself, "He met me there, and there, and there, it was dark then, too." So maybe, just maybe, "is anyone there in the dark?" Yes, I hear myself saying, there is.

Yawn. Too much thinking makes me tired.

I wonder what's on TV tonight? Shrek? I wonder...