Of Crossing Over to New Ground, Walking By Faith, Holding Peace, Choosing Joy, and Listening to Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Schubert, Schumann, and Mozart

All photos by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, most taken on April 22 and the last on April 23

When one walks by faith, the unseen reality both meets one in front and sometimes overtakes one from behind.

Information came to me this week about what the bulk of the people I had to leave behind in 2022 and 2023 were doing then and have been doing and are still doing since my departure.

I know now, in fact, what I knew by faith then: all I could have done that was right was to leave, and keep leaving, and never turn back. The devil truly is in the details that have come out.

When the facts came to light and were brought to me, it was strange ... two final, devastating confirmations and ... consolation? New perspective on the heartbreak I had endured, walking away and alone, came in light of knowing the heartbreak there would have been had I not obeyed when called, and in light of the realization that now, I did not need to solve any part of the problems. None of it was within my area of responsibility any more. I had been called away ... so could it be that the depth of my loss and its sorrow could be swallowed up in acceptance, and gratitude?

I could not work out all my feelings then, but I could choose my joy, and while still processing the facts began planning my walks of the week. Meanwhile, YouTube had what I needed literally at the top of the page, with Herbert Schuch literally looking in the direction I was as well...

The Benediction of God in Solitude -- that is the English for this piece, discovered on the day in my life that I needed the reminder most. That this news should have come to me after I had crossed the verge between the two worlds ... though not feeling it still ...

But as opportunities had emerged, I had chosen those that fit in with what I had been called to, into the responsibilities I already had, without overcompensating for the needs in others. This was an internal milestone I had been moved toward since the halcyon of winter, not knowing why ... not fully understanding why I was being pulled toward my rest and joy so strongly, but walking in it without question ... as I had walked away in 2022 and 2023, without question.

It required twenty-two months for the truth to be revealed ... it is a good thing I know the Voice of the One Who has called me well enough not to have waited to get all of the available facts. Faith ... in that I had walked ... in hope of better for me and others before me, and always with love ... the more excellent way ... through the deep darkness, toward joy ... meeting joy in the way in rest and relief, and then, at last, knowing it as itself. What would I have lost in that twenty-two months, when the truth was the truth all along, and I could not have changed it?

Then it occurred to me: could I have endured the blow, now, after twenty-two more months of such heavy investment as I had been making, without the improvements in all aspects of my mental and physical health ... at the expense of both those things, over that same twenty-two months? Would I have had Things Ms. Dee Likes, my Hive newsletter promoting the best of my fellow Hivers that I could find and read every week, in its 70th week tomorrow? Would I have had the energy last summer to write that fifth book, and thus be on course to keynote on Day 3 of the Faith Business Success Virtual Summit?

None of the people I was working so hard with were ready twenty-two months ago. Only a few had made themselves ready since -- and ONE I thought was ready made it her business to let me know by her actions that no, she was not.

I had to let the majority go. I always had to let them go. The necessity had been to do it by faith, and learn along the way how obedience had been for my blessing and that of those I would meet along the way. In choosing obedience to the One Who had called me, and to what I had been called, I had chosen my joy in advance ... and thus it would ever be.

The temporal corollary to this, in the heart of a deeply loving woman: it was not for me to change or accept being designated as chattel by others. I could not put into anyone's heart the sincere love I tended to have for them. I knew that in regard to romance, but the completeness of which I needed to know, in a time in which my own nation was flirting with reversion to more oppressive patterns, was not apparent to me until it became apparent in 2022 and 2023, and at last was revealed to me in full this week.

How brokenhearted I had been ... as compared to how wrecked I would have been, had I waited to know ... but now ...

"Alles Wasser unter der Brücke," I said as I approached the more rustic of the two bridges in Blue Heron Lake to cross onto Strawberry Hill ... from the moment I came to the lake on this foggy, breezy day, silver light seemed to be running to me like the shimmering texture of the first section of the Liszt piece...

Spring even overcast with silver ... still shocking in its colors of beauty...

... over and over ...

... and over again ...

... with no one with me but the One of Whom Liszt wrote, blessing me in my solitude ... to have come from the cares of the world to have time to be here with the Creator of all things, where His handiwork mingles with that of mankind as it does in music ... what a blessing!

As I came nearer to the western bridge to Strawberry Hill, the colors became even brighter, it seemed, in welcome ...

... and then as I looked back ...

All was beauty. I was grateful for the journey, and determined: I was past figuring it out, for that too was a form of bargaining, of trying to find a way it could have been different. I was past depression, for although my heart still hurt to have heard what had happened since, that was balanced by gratitude that I had not needed to endure any but a last glancing blow ... that I had been called out and preserved, for I was not built to endure a minute more of the foolishness! Not a minute more!

I was completely alone -- not relative to being at Blue Heron Lake, but in terms of those I had walked closely with for a decade as friends, there was no one and there could be no one. But now, all the reasons having been revealed over the course of that time -- for there had been an earlier conversation in the year regarding matters earlier in the decade -- the sorrow of all that hit differently, about as differently as Martti Talvela's take on King Marke's lament than Kurt Moll's ... now with the evidence right in front of him, and knowing all that there is to know, still not willing to hate, still not willing to cease loving, still not willing to close the door on the possibility of somehow forgiving (because he will, later in Tristan und Isolde), but royally accepting that it is what it is, and he cannot change it.

Mr. Talvela's take is as beautiful as Herr Möll's -- there is a reason the Finnish bass still holds his place as tied for favorite bass with the German bass whenever he makes the scene, and there is no need for competition! The main difference is because Mr. Talvela's version is more emotionally accessible up front, it is easier to get into the idea that he sees what has broken his heart right in front of him, at that moment.

Mr. Talvela's King Marke goes through two stages of grief: depression and acceptance, back to back and collapsed into each other, such that he can move on and have his listener move on because it is done. And it is. Both Tristan and Isolde are already as good as dead at that point. Mr. Talvela's King Marke already knows this, and he should, since the law of the time says that the next move should be for him to order their execution. In the end, that matter takes care of itself and he is not burdened with having to order it -- but he alone of the three beloveds survives to live and reign (however unhappily).

King Marke deserves better as a character -- I have made some effort in that direction in Q-Inspired once, and I may again in future as this lament has come back to mind with Mr. Talvela's approach. But in the meantime, his approach brought me in mind of where I also was: the beautiful past was long gone, the evidence of why was before me, and all there was for me to do was regally walk on.

I turned around and stretched myself up to my full though little height ... and walked on, pacing off the stages of grief all the way to the bridge. Denial? There had never been much of that, and there was certainly none left. Anger? It had been swallowed up by heartbreak -- in me, it was almost always eclipsed by the sheer pain of loss. Bargaining? In the form of overcompensating, yes -- but even that was now seven months back of me relative to the people I had in mind, and was a lingering habit I was unwinding purposefully as I moved forward and would continue to unwind.

Acceptance ... yes, at last ... I met it by walking ever toward it as the full truth of the matters overtook me from behind. Now, had I not already been on the move, and not already so close to acceptance, that truth would have crushed me -- but it had come on time.

At last on the bridge. I stopped at its peak to watch the waters from the course where I had been --

-- pass through to the way on which I was walking --

-- and then, looking back no more, and not even to walk back by that way again that day, I at last crossed over to the lower portions of Strawberry Hill, where spring reigned on the shores.

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past appeared, his hiking attire for the day recalling that of King Marke's royal burgundy, and opened his long arms to me.

"Herzlich wilkommen, meine liebe Töchterlein -- du hast übergangen!"

You have over [it] gone -- I had made it, across the bridge, from the grief of the old with the many to the beginning of a life centered on joy, though in relative solitude ... and my companion, in humility and honor to the One Who had called me, and with Whom I would pass the significant portion of my life as I conceived of it now when not in service to others, did not yet sing, but turned on "Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude" again. Of course, that in itself was a lesson ... my life needed not be entirely in solitude, but would admit of those who showed humility and honor where it was due instead of sapping every ounce of energy and light in chasing down wills-of-the-wisp in pursuit of their own status in a decadent, dying system.

My grand old soldier and I ... two people who had long walked in parallel, and who loved music and nature and had been called in service by the Maker of it all, in service to humanity as He set forth in Christ: "Do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith." He had walked alone for many years, and then it had been given him to walk with me ... it had been given to me to walk with him nearer the beginning of my life, and since the pandemic, I had come to the time for me to primarily walk alone. But "Can two walk together unless they be agreed?" -- no, but if agreed, yes -- so, I was being told up front, just across the bridge: I would walk alone as long as called, and it would be wonderful, but at any time, companionship might be called to me, and now that I had crossed over, there was little to fear in that.

"Wilkommen zuhause," my companion said, his eyes shining and face glowing and voice thrilling with such joy that I remembered he was just an echo of the joy above him ... that joy that I had come to where I had been called to go.

But, what that also meant that something had to give ... he was holding his gravity and his voice in safe mortal approximation, and his glowing was not quite as notable in the bright sunshine, but he had lost his English for the time being ... yet I understood him saying "Welcome to [your] house," or really, "Welcome home" or even "Welcome to home's things" ... clearly I was not at my earthly or heavenly home yet, but it is said that "The way to heaven is heaven all the way" -- a dedicated walk allows one to participate in home's things all the way.

My companion's face lit up -- I had picked up what he meant, but then he laughed gently.

"Bitte entshuldige mich ... ich habe mein Englisch vergessen, Frau Mathews!"

In his joy he had forgotten his English, but ... .

"Herr Möll, ich verstehe Sie sehr gut. Sie haben so viel Freude!"

I understood he had so much joy that he was overjoyed, his heart in jubilee for me, that I had passed over!

"Ich habe so viel Freude ... so viel Freude ... ach, mein Herz jubelt für dich ... ach, mein Herz jubelt für dich, meine Töchterlein!"

"Freiheit und Freude und Frieden!" I murmured -- freedom and joy and peace -- as at last it hit me, and my tears began to flow as I also became overjoyed. He embraced me, and said, but now with the full assurance that I had received it: "Nur ruhe, Frau Mathews! Nur ruhe!"

And then as we stood in that beautiful place...

... he gave voice to his feelings in song, for Strauss had written for Admiral Morosus about the joy of life when at last one learns how to live it and rest from the folly of the world ... only rest ... nur ruhe!

That stage timing of his ... he had hardly opened his mouth before the sun came out, and the warmth of its caress combined with the warmth of his voice just blessed the whole western side of that lake.

Afterward we rested in that sunshine a while, and in due time, he smiled.

"You chose your joy and held your peace, though directly provoked -- how could you meet anything but love, walking in its most excellent way, and away from being pulled back to the grief of the past, although I know, Frau Mathews, that the last sting this week hurt you deeply."

"Ich grolle nicht, Herr Möll," I said. "I know very well the weakness of that person, and that neither she nor that circle have any power over me any more. I do not bear a grudge, and I do not complain."

"Oh, you have discovered Frau Elena Gerhardt -- now she was a lieder-singer!"

"You must after this hear her 'An die Musik' -- you think I sing that? No. You have not yet heard it sung, but now you will!"

"Frau Gerhardt certainly sings wonderfully," I said, "and although I brook no rival to my favorite bass in 'An die Musik' -- ."

The spirit of said bass laughed -- "Well, we already knew that, Frau Mathews!"

"Yet I greatly enjoyed her interpretation of that, and especially 'Ich grolle nicht.'"

"You are indeed much better, Frau Mathews. You are enjoying sopranos!"

"Things are indeed different now," I said. "Ich habe übergangen!"

"Du hast übergangen," he said with a smile. "You have passed over, Frau Mathews, to the place of your healing. In due time we shall find a living soprano you like, but, progress!"

"Progress!" I said, and we laughed, but there was more to that. The old master teacher never arrived without his lesson plan.

"Tell me this, Frau Mathews. Why not more sopranos?"

"My mother and I are altos, and my grandmother a contralto. My sister has basically the same timbre voice as mine but the strength is on the higher end, so mezzo-soprano -- but for me the strength is lower, so, contralto. High sopranos sometimes sound like children to me, and the operatic repertoire being what it is, they often sound like they are having tantrums. Now I know that is not fair, and even in some operas it is not the case, but the first operatic role I remember is the Queen of the Night."

"Oh, no!" he said, and laughed. "That is most unfortunate, Frau Mathews!"

"But, I am passing over it," I said.

"Why do you think it should be easier now, at last?" my companion asked. "You loved your first music teacher, Sis. Henrietta Horace, who taught you how to sing alto! You loved her so much that when she wanted to make her first album at age 86, the age I am as you count time on Earth, you made all the legal and musical things happen for her so that she succeeded by age 88! She was still a bit higher than mezzo-soprano -- really spinto at that advanced age -- just below Sis. Minnie Ruth Jackson, a coloratura soprano who was your first professional mentor at the age of nine, and started you toward all the service to the community you are doing now. She also sang beautifully to a late age!"

The wind blew coldly upon me then, and the clouds showed strange colors -- it must have been raining way, way up --

-- as childhood memories, more than thirty years removed, played back, and I remembered what had happened ... oh, that wind was cold ...

"For little such wisdom as came from your mother, your grandmother, and their wise peers has come to your ears from your peers among women," my companion said gently, "and most women are, in fact, sopranos."

"And the roles sopranos sing in opera tend to remind me that the wise old sopranos I loved have been gone a long time, and the gap cannot be filled," I said.

"I take the liberty of gently correcting you, Frau Mathews," he said, and I would not be the first basso profundo to make the point. In primarily choosing your own company among women, you have actually filled the gap for yourself by growing up to it in spiritual harmony. And this is also why, after Frau Horace's passing, the man she considered her son also gave you this compliment with his whole heart of love."

"Oh, my grand old soldier," I said.

"And also this is how the voice of love moved down in a cold, cold world, from soprano, alto, tenor -- like your father -- to bass.

"But now, Frau Mathews, you know that in choosing the more excellent way, love will meet you from everywhere ... and that is why, suddenly, sopranos no longer annoy you so long as they sing of the love and wisdom you listen everywhere for. This is part of your healing and growth, and will allow you, from here on, to have all the companions you need."

"You know," I said, "that does make sense."

We walked along the bottom of Strawberry Hill a little while, below its westernmost face that could not be climbed (although I did notice a higher path ... so perhaps there is another route!)

... and just past it, my companion came to a halt, and said, very gently, "Because you are so like the women who mentored you, and the men also, it was always inevitable that you would have to pass over, out of communion with a generation and a time that despises the deep spiritual and community wisdom that those elders poured into you. There is another portion of this you must understand as well, you who cannot see how your peers and near-peers, who have elders like unto your own, can be as they are in such numbers."

He paused a moment, and then said, "I must show it to you in a blow, in a picture analogous to the truth you twice received this week. Will you permit me, Frau Mathews?"

"I will," I said.

He put his arm around me, and then I followed his gaze, and there was the image that explained it all.

The waves of feelings that washed over me as my companion quietly intoned, not yet in his double-deep voice, but verging, to descend as he went ...

"Now you could not have seen that from far off ... it still has needles on its limbs, and amidst the green they seem green. From some distance also it seems that the branch is still connected to the tree, and the tree is right here by the water -- the branch itself is in direct communion with that water, as though it would take a direct hand in its own nourishment. In this place full of life, therefore, how would you know, Frau Mathews?

"Yet with growth and also perspective, we see that branch is absolutely and utterly dead, though it be in close proximity to appropriate sources of life. All that there is now is for the groundskeepers, or time itself, to take it away."

He dropped his voice into the top of his double-deep range ...

"There a much older story, told by One greater than me, of a vineyard, and a vine -- 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches,' for which His Father is the Who tends to the vine. If we were to look at the vine in the spring, all would seem well and green ... but at harvest time, the vine dresser marks well which branches yielded fruit and which did not, which is why it is also there written: 'Every branch that yields fruit He purges that it may bear more fruit, and every branch which does not yield fruit He takes away."

"That's from John 14, thou good and faithful echo," I said.

"Indeed it is," he said. "What I wish you to focus your attention on is that of course it is a picture, an analogy ... yet now if there were a fruitful branch with, say, the heart of a deeply loving woman, the pain of the pruning, although great, might not compare to that pain of seeing other branches -- other branches that looked healthy in the spring -- be taken away to be burned. But it is in the hands of the Vine Dresser, not any of the branches, just as it is not for any wheat to tear out the tares -- the darnel grass -- in its midst. And indeed, without the passage of time, and the opportunity to produce a harvest, how can it be known? Yet in the fullness of time, those things that are fruitful in their connection to good soil and good water sources are kept and tended, and those that are not are taken away.

"Now, meine Töchterlein, reflect ... ."

"In 2022 and 2023, you kept bearing good fruit for the One Who has called you, in spite of it all -- and now, even more, for you have been purged of those connections that were diverting so much of your energy. I know the pain was very deep, but du hast übergangen! You have passed over and come through it, and new ground, well-watered, is your portion."

He smiled there ... but then his face became as grave as the awesome lower half of his double-deep speaking range.

"Yet there are still those not even content to be dead. One is publicly spitting poison at you -- but from distance, because already taken away. Though the lot of them had some elders who we generously presume were as wise as yours, and although they had proximity to every blessing from Heaven to earth you were willing and able and eager to share with them -- though even they called themselves Christian, as you do -- though to all appearance from any distance and even in proximity for a time, it seems they could not be so utterly lost -- yet relative to at least to you, they are.

He paused, and turned so that he was no longer at my shoulder, but looking me in my eyes while both his hands went tenderly upon my shoulders.

"Hör mir zu, Frau Mathews, You are no longer responsible for them. You did all that you were called to do. They are now in the hands of the Master Gardener, and you may safely leave them there. There is no further harvest they may have with you at this time, but I know there is no desire for vengeance within you, so I may offer you hope. The Master Gardener is gracious and just, and, He can when He chooses make dead branches live. Although you are finished with the matters of 2022 and 2023, you may yet rejoice in future years to see what He can do, for as it is also written, 'one plants, another waters, and ... '"

"And God gives the increase," I finished the quotation.

"So that though you have crossed over in faith, you may yet consider the past in hope, and thus continue on in the more excellent way of love, for as I have sung to you many times and you have read it many times more, of course faith, hope, and love remain, and the greatest of those is love."

For a moment, I had a moment, and fell sobbing into his arms.

"Oh, Herr Möll ... what I would not have given ... the complaints and drama in which they are lost because the world will not do this and men will not do that and others are planning to do this and that over here ... I gave them tools that would have changed all that in a mere six months! They did not need to be stuck in not having this and that -- they all got my fifth book in October and November! Bitcoin was around $20K then -- it is not any more! I tried so hard!"

"Ich weiss, meine Töchterlein ... I know, my dear daughter, I know. But for you it is yet to be here, and be comforted."

Though we were on Strawberry Hill, not my beloved Buena Vista Hill, he presaged the next major portion of the day's lesson while wrapping his deep, dark voice around me and taking that pain away...

... and then pretty much carried past that place of the broken branch...

... and I understood there also what he was echoing as we came to still lovelier scenes ...

... and scenes of perspective, of seeing known facts in a different way ...

... for those were the trees through which, after turning and crossing the eastern bridge, one may see my favorite little falls...

... and yet even then, on a path I knew, there were new archways ...

... although those were sized for the other companions to these portions of our walk ...

"And so we also see that there are paths fitted for those meant to walk in them," my companion said. "But you would never begrudge the bluejay and the blackbird what has been given them, but not to you, for you are settled into there being plenty for all, and knowing the abundance shall be apportioned by grace. So then also you now stand apart from all those who were around you who are not yet in touch with that wisdom. It could not otherwise be, Frau Mathews. This is what it means to be set apart, and if you follow that concept out, you will find that the word holy comes from it.

"As a German I will also say this to you ... once, to the age of Charlemagne, we had a Holy Roman Empire, and then after that, as Wagner explains it in Die Meistersinger, we sufficed ourselves with the idea of holy German art ... but that is not at all what I mean, Frau Mathews, and it is important that I say it because when you hear the idea in Wagner, and Schubert before him, and Beethoven more remotely before him, the historical reference does not necessarily go where you think it would, although Beethoven and Schubert were raised as Catholics. You see, there are those who think holiness can be combined with imperial grasping. I need not say where that eventually led my country any more that you need say to me where yours may also go, unless those who know better are vigilant!

"But holy actually means, 'set apart from sin,' and Schubert in 'An die Musik' long with Lowe in 'Meeresleucthen' are not far off when they perceive of light and music coming to mankind as a part of that holiness, just as your ancestors knew 'Over my head, I hear music in the air' -- but they were closer still, and finished the thought all the way out."

"'There must be a God somewhere,'" I said, and finished the quote.

"And if there is," my companion said, "and we have already perceived that light and music and holiness must be above and set apart from the ravening behavior of most of the world -- even though the reflection of the fact in my ancestral music and yours is more like that in water than a mirror ... ."

"Where must you be, Frau Mathews, in search of a pure and holy life? Where must the beauty of such a life meet you?"

"Not in community with those who for whom the practice of pride, malice, greed, is pretty much the whole of what is considered life."

This staggered me as a citizen of the United States, as someone who aspired to its high ideals, but knew its history and its present culture, all too well ... so much pride, malice, greed, scaled high and low ... so thick that even if one came and offered means of improvement, it would be rejected if it did not seem to minister enough to the pride, malice, and greed that was the spirit of the age, in possession of the bulk of the people.

"And since I lived in Germany until I was called to fill my bass seat in the choir above in 2017," he said, "I can tell you that although Germany has learned more from its consequences than your nation has, you still would not have been at home in the common mass. You still would have been set apart, Frau Mathews."

"Well, for one thing, I'm clearly not German, and that would have been obvious," I said.

"That is not at all what I mean," he said, "for right here, living and working in your own community, affinity has proven to provide no security to your heart. What I mean, Frau Mathews, goes to matters of the heart, and there, age and race and gender hold no sway. Your grand old soldier and you have to live in this world still, and so certain things were not possible because the age gap was too wide ... and yet, both of you, nourished by the same elders and the same high and holy wisdom, found in each other the great love of your life. Your parents, with a less daunting age gap but still significant, come from the same line of elder teachers, and were seeking to step up and do the same protective work for the community after a disaster when they met.

"Since then, there have been many other disasters in your community ... and yet, you, protected well, have come into the Information Age, and now may commune at least in the realm of the heart and mind with people from around the world in every language, in every recorded decade. You've also been on Hive five years -- and you talk with people from around the world and use Google Translate as needed, daily! You are right here writing, and using many pictures and much music so that by at least one means, anyone who reads your post might feel something of Der Helige Akkord ... somehow, from somewhere outside of them, to be brought into a space completely apart from the ravening world and all its pet sins ... a place of beauty, and love, and holiness.

"You have always been coming here, Frau Mathews. You could bring no one with you who is living for pride, greed, and malice. It is not permitted. And this is a picture, also, of the eternal destinies of mankind, divided as they are. It is why Don Giovanni, refusing to repent, felt only the cold grip of death in the Commendatore's sincere invitation. It is why, given an abundance of safe roads, the character in Winterreise who refused to take seriously that he was following a will-of-the-wisp into deadly passes in 'Irrlicht' finds that there is only the path over which is written the sentence of death remaining for him in 'Der Wegweiser.' But it is also why, for you ... .

For a moment, he changed his aspect to Commendatore, and extended his hand to me. I took it, and came to his warm, loving paternal embrace, with no thought of any terrors.

"Welcome home, Frau Mathews -- wilkommen zuhause, meine Töchterlein," he said. "There will be sorrows and battles in the way, for that is part of life in this world, but still: you are already at home, Frau Mathews, in matters of the heart. The more you step forward in accord -- in holy accord -- with this reality, the more at home you will be until, as Brahms put it in 'Mit vierzig Jahren,' you will find yourself in port almost before you know it!"

"To rest in that cool night from the heat of the day, hearing the music of the love above to which I am going, to borrow from Brahms's 'Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,'" I said.

"Yes, Frau Mathews ... so, with home's things with you, and behind you, and before you, all there is for you to do is to keep walking in the more excellent way, and choose among all the joys there are given to you to choose, and hold your peace. You have done well under a great shock, and great provocation this week -- well done! Now, then keep walking -- although for today we must stop here, for it is getting too cold and windy and I must have you instantly at your physical home!"

"April can be winter's extra month in San Francisco sometimes," I said, "but I don't feel particularly cold right now."

"I am a thorough object lesson -- like I would let you be chilled, echoing Him Who has you under His perfect protection! Like I need to get fired in this stage of my existence! Really, Frau Mathews?"

And suddenly I was in the arms of King Marke again, note-perfect as ever, but with a huge grin above that famous white beard:

"Tatest du's wirklich?"

I laughed so hard and so long at the perfectly out-of-context use of that line that he had me at home almost before I knew it ... but sometime later, I considered it ... that line taken from beginning in lament to ending here in joy ... the difference in the paths of people ... how the choices made and responded to made just that much difference ... and then I heard laughing thunder somewhere above me! He had waited all that time ... the old master teacher and comedian had me rolling laughing to finish the day!

"In your church, your pastor would have said about me dropping that line on you, 'You'll catch that when you get home, Sis. Deeann!' So you are home, and at last caught it! Now this old teacher can go home and rest, my duties fully discharged, because I am not about to get fired at this stage of my existence! Lebewohl, mein kind!"

He then stepped up all the way home, laughing merrily across the layers of the sunset.