The Day

Photo by Katinka Matson

What can a man like me do on a day like this? 

A day that's cold and snowy. 

A day which bears the energies of differerent sources of the great great universe... 

What can a man like me do on a Thursday, in the year of 2012? 

A man like me can wake up at 6:40 AM and leave the bed half an hour later. 

That man also can lead his daughter up to her school bus at 7:30 AM. 

That man can kiss her wife and send her off to work at 7:31 AM and look to the white and thick sky spraying showflakes down to earth.

What can a man like me expect from a day like this in a month like February?

That man can shave, put on a jean and a t-shirt and  head to a professional event like this at the hotel like this.

On his way to hotel, just in front of the next building to his one, he may see a sweet dog like this:

After saying "hi" to this guy, he can take a taxi to the hotel.

He may meet some friends at the hotel, chat with them, listen to the great presentation delivered by these gentlemen and come back home on foot at 6:00 PM.

A man like me can have a bottle of this beer and some slices of toasted spicy bread prepared by his wife.

After his daughter fell asleep, a man like me and his wife can watch a great movie like this.

And, my friends, the man like me can be hypnotized by the movie.
He may describe that movie as a full visual feast.
The perfection of the pictures, the power and the simplicity of the words and the whole harmony can make a man like me cry at the end of the movie.

On a day like this, while it is still snowing at night, what is a man like me supposed to do?

Although he is not a fan of religions or those sort of things, he may want to share what Father Haynes preached in the movie:

Job imagined he might build his nest on high – that the integrity of his behavior would protect him against misfortune. And his friends thought, mistakenly, that the Lord could only have punished him because secretly he’d done something wrong.

But, no, misfortune befalls the good as well. We can’t protect ourselves against it. We can’t protect our children. We can’t say to ourselves, even if I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure they are.

We vanish as a cloud. We wither as the autumn grass, and like a tree are rooted up.
Is there some fraud in the scheme of the universe? Is there nothing which is deathless? Nothing which does not pass away?

We cannot stay where we are. We must journey forth.

We must find that which is greater than fortune or fate. Nothing can bring us peace but that.
Is the body of the wise man, or the just, exempt from any pain? From any disquietude, from the deformity that might blight its beauty, from the weakness that might destroy its health?

Do you trust in God?

Job, too, was close to the Lord. Are your friends and children your security? There is no hiding place in all the world where trouble may not find you. No one knows when sorrow might visit his house, any more than Job did.

The very moment everything was taken away from Job, he knew it was the Lord who’d taken it away. He turned from the passing shows of time. He sought that which is eternal.
Does he alone see God’s hand who sees that He gives, or does not also the one see God’s hand who sees that He takes away? Does he alone see God who sees God turn His face towards him? Does not also he see God who sees God turn his back?