◎ "Help Wanted"

Why am I awake?

This is the question that runs through my mind this evening. This evening, when I should be working on finishing my essay draft but cannot but muse between dives. Do you think that everyone lives like this, and I've just caught up to normalcy, or do you think this is a different kind of being awake? I don't... think so. I think this is significant. Something has profoundly shifted in a way that I don't believe is commonplace. 

But... even as I feel grounded, integrated, and prepared... there is no quest yet attached.

I said it's all prologue. I said I'm whole now... And yet I am also sitting at the beginning of something, when everything is still, and something is yet to come. I am breathing that enchanted air before there is a knock on the door, the arrival of a letter, or a telepathic message; "Please help me. I am a prisoner in the dungeon of the castle."

I am calm because I know who I am, and what I'm capable of, and I have a deep sense that all will be well. Things might get harder, but it's all the same stuff, isn't it? Patterns upon patterns, manifesting in different skins, calling us only as we are capable to rise to the occasion of mundane, human manifestations of humiliated myth. 

...

I would like to stay away from the idea of bring proud of this, but I... acknowledge that there have been plenty of crossroads up until now where I could easily, at various points, have fallen into madness... Not necessarily recently, though there were some, but through it all... and I didn't. I have come from that moment all my years ago when I called out to the sky, "Give me courage to go where no angel will go," and... I did. And dearest reader, no one need go where I have been.

... 

I am both curious and cautious about where this could go, 1) because I am afraid that speculating too early could curb anything organic, 2) But any analogues I have to such an experience are mythical, so as it applies to real life, I might benefit from casting some broad nets... perhaps in the future, though. I feel no need to move right this moment. This is... The moment after the in-game cinematic, when you are given the controls and there is a breath, as you orientate yourself and take your first steps into a world in which you are unfamiliar, but know that something auspicious is afoot, and where you stand now is likely to become the object of nostalgia and great intimacy compared to what lies ahead. This is that... exact feeling. The board is set, but you cannot see the other side of it, and it's unclear who or what has made (or will make) a first move.

And I guess it's... well it's not a "chop wood, carry water" moment, but my limited experience also tells me that it's probably alright (and maybe even necessary) that for some period in my immediate future, I may get carried away into various small tasks that help me become familiar with my environment, and build relationships with people in a way that helps to discern where my particular skills and character might be sorely needed. Perhaps I have merely woken up a little late, and I am already in the thick of such a thing...

"But Theozete," you say, "you have already felt "called" to ministry, what is different now?"

Thanks for your question, pocket-strawman... But it's not like that. The call I have felt before, versus what I feel now, is not totally different, but... digested. Somehow... being fulfilled, if you will. What was a desired "occupation" suddenly pales compared to something that rests in my bones, like the vocation it should have been from the beginning. Less defined, but so much deeper. It changes nothing about what I will work toward, or my feelings on institutions and rights, but... for lack of a better expression, dearest reader, I confess I feel as though I have been inhabited-- as if something enveloping landed upon my head from above and melted into my being. What is this? I don't know. I honestly do not know. And I am not trying to make it sound grandiose or somehow providential on a global scale. But it does feel... Good.