In Good Faith

(Experimental Fiction based on the Pecha Kucha style) 

[The Awakening]

 I’ve never felt more insignificant than the time I stood and stared into the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean.  The darkness went on forever, the sea and the sky mixed into oblivion.  I felt like I had rediscovered life.  And in the same breath, I wondered if I had witnessed death. 

[Amen]

 I watched my daughter sleeping and I wondered what graceful hand molded the perfection that I beheld.  Surely there had to have been something beyond my comprehension that had taken great care to create such a masterpiece.  It was art. No accident.

[The Afterlife]

 I saw faith extinguished once.  It floated away like a child’s lost balloon, vanishing into a white field of nothingness.  It was when she buried her child, a baby girl.  Was two days enough time to determine her fate?

[Faith]

 The smell of latex and death hung in the air.  I cried as I watched the strongest man I knew hollowed to a shell of his former self.  As he stood on the brink of uncertainty, the pain in his eyes showed that he was ready to go. And just like that, he knew.

   [Fate]

I watched as a child was baptized in the name of the Father, white gown flowing in the water of rebirth and righteousness. Into death, into the water, we fall into an abyss of oblivion: a complete state of unknowing, forgetting all of the life that we have lived, not even knowing the finality of death.  What if we never know?

[Seeing is Believing]

At a Christian summer camp, I sat alone in front of a silent lake.  The stars were hand placed in the vast night sky.  I felt life in everything around me.  My heart was moved to passion: I knew the truth.

[The Truth Shall Set You Free]

Years later I flipped through thin pages of books decorated with the musings of wise men like Paine and Byron.  Reason became my way, dispassionate intelligence was my truth, the present was my only life. 

[The Brotherhood]

A sea of red tail lights like eyes of demons.  Every passenger in a world of their own.  If we all drove right off the edge of the earth, would we just wind up on the other side? Reinvented in another life and time?

[Fireworks]

I stared into the center of a sunflower and watched the petals explode like flames in the wind.  There was spirit.  There was vitality.  There was life.

[Houses of the Holy]

I watched my daughter as she lay on her stomach painting yellow and orange suns.  The idea that her happiness was only temporary, that her spark would one day be extinguished, was a lie I wasn’t willing to swallow.

   [Where the Sidewalk Ends]

My foundation was cracked like the jagged breaks in the sidewalk.  But instead of liquid damnation bubbling at my feet, a tree sprouted and grew.

[Blessing]

On my way to Washington, D.C. I drove through Virginia.  I had never seen so many magnificent trees in my life.  Beautiful bursts of vivid orange and red that seemed to bleed from the branches.  Trees of life.

[Curse]

In the dark, my breath was still visible on the cold night’s air.  If I held my breath, would that make me invisible?  What it all cease to matter?  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  For those who know the most, sometimes suffer for their knowledge.

[Ants go Marching]

I watched a group of ants carrying cookie crumbs off my floor.  They moved to and fro, each in their own world.  I wonder if they knew how close to death they were.  I wonder if it even mattered?  I wondered if we even mattered?

[Imagine]

Reflected in his glasses, I could see a light.  A spark of mortality, the knowledge of death.  A cloud of certainty floated across his forehead, as his thoughts came to life and imagination became existence. 

[Blinded]

Some imagine that witnessing paradise is like a blinding glare of hot white light behind the eyes.  I imagine that it will be like the soft glow of a candle, where enlightenment is softly spread throughout.  The candle is sometimes so blinding that we tend to neglect it.

      [Stalking]

There’s a 170 ft. cross that I pass each evening on my way home from work.  There it stands each day, with the glow of the setting sun behind it.  I feel the cold from the shadow it creates.

[Heat]

I stare at the sun with my eyes closed, bright red heat reflected behind my eyelids.  Every night when I close my eyes to slumber, I wonder if my eyes will eternally behold the heat.

[Myths]

On road trips back home, we traveled through a small town where the only thing around was the smell of sulfur and barbecue. Stairtown: population 35.  It was said that this town held the staircase to hell.  When you’re young you’ll believe anything.  I guess it’s the same when you’re old.

[Paradise]

I sit at work and the phone is ringing, the clock is ticking, cars are passing, wind is blowing, the world is turning.  What if it just stopped?  What if it just ceased to exist?  What if it was all over and we were none the wiser?