Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Meeting the Legend

"Give me your hand," she said.

I laid my fingers, face-up, in the cup of her open palm. I could feel the warmth radiating from beneath the surface of her skin, concentrated in a single spot that pulsed, slowly...filling me beat by beat with a soothing, comforting energy.

She closed her eyes, and I studied her face. It was not the perfect, wrinkle-free mask of serenity that I had envisioned when I first glimpsed her from afar. In that moment, my breath caught, seeing heaven in this earthly form.

The creases in her brow betrayed the years of concentration/examination/intropection which were the price of her wisdom. The corners of her eyes showed faint traces of the course worn by tears which could not be contained. The quietude of her expression could not hide the deep laugh lines engraved over years of struggling to learn to laugh with life.

Instead of making her look older, the experiences relayed by these marks made her ageless. This was the source of the radiance I saw from afar -- the radiance of life lived and loved for what it was.

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