I ran down the court house steps and burst into song:
“Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah! Praise ye, the Lord!”
Then suddenly I was joined by a chorus – the angels in heaven, my dead daddy, and all my friends who didn’t even yet know the story, but who I knew would be celebrating with me once they were told.
“Praise ye, the Lord” they called, and I responded,
“hallelujah!”
“Praise ye, the Lord”, they sang again.
“Hallelujah!” I replied.
And then together we exploded like the mighty crashing of waves on shore,
“Praise ye the Lord!”
I am not an evangelist by nature, nor do I tend to display my religious conviction with outward expression of emotion. I am, after all, a Methodist – one with Zen Buddhist influences, Taoist aims and a full range of new age vocabulary. But today, I was a born-again enthusiast.
In the last decade, I had lost all faith in our judicial system, the deliverance of justice, the belief in fairness, and any hope that I had a voice, a story to tell, and ears that would hear. But today as I sat in that court room in Greenville, Ohio, representing myself, I saw compassion on the face of the judge and also on the opposing lawyer.
As I drove to the hearing I prayed that I would be absolutely genuine, honest, and humble, and in the transformation, all anger and defense vanished. You see, anger cannot coexist with humility. It vanished! Oh how liberating it was to be free of my anger! And how empowering it was “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Oh, yes, and oh how validating to be heard!
Barely keeping to the speed limit, I raced to my favorite cemetery in the country. Nestled between dried up corn fields, roaming cattle, the bright blue sky and framed by the winding road, the cemetery had been a favorite retreat during my short and tumultuous marriage. So again, I returned to her familiar comfort to be with God. The wind was strong, making the cornstalk dance; the trees like tambourines. My hair whipped around me like a mad conductor and I leapt into the air because I believed I could fly. My bare feet sprang from the soft earth and propelled me into festive twirls. I spun around the headstones from one edge of the small cemetery to the other. Together the living earth sang with me and praised God for I was free from anger, clothed in humility, and am now, genuinely prepared to accept the unfolding of events I cannot possible see.
“Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah! Praise ye, the Lord!”
