I find myself stopping in a crowd of people and time slows still. Their laughter, their unpredictable movements, the fights and the resolutions and the bonding of brothers--all quiet. I am left in the fabric of things to wonder at the tapestry we call a culture.

How am I to know what is proper when all have their own true mothertongue? Who can teach me what to say when all I know is jumbled and disheveled based on who I've been and what I know?

I leave behind a southern legacy of liturgy and doctrine that outlines exactly what is human and exactly what is not. I step into a society that constantly years to fill a void--please Lord, find us someone who knows the Truth.  

Their apathy and nonchalance is false; bravado is left wanting. I know they they all cry out for connection and seek it in flesh rather than spirit. I am caught in the midst of the pursuit of happiness and the quest for morality. I know not what brings joy to humanity, I hike towards that river and hope it is not run dry like all others.

In the study of psychology, I have found so many places where words fall short and the great carnal animal within all of us takes precedence, demands attention, seeking comfort in a world that often overlooks those that need it the most.

Love is a fragile, timid thing that is most often hard to find and difficult to voice. Instead, we lash out in aggression to hide that inner child that needs a tried and true comfort of a known embrace. We seek forgiveness and express it in anger, manipulation, meeting our needs however possible because this is America, after all.

This is all we want in our sequestered human heart, the beginning of redemption.