At the studio, in the dark, while standing out in the yard preparing to lock doors and drive home to the smokejumper base, I can see into the neighbor’s house — lit up in the night for the first time in the withering daylight hours of late August.

In what appears to be a study or office, the word SHALOM is written boldly on a whiteboard that hangs from a wall beside an open doorway.

Written in yawning, uneven block letters.

Written for me.

They don’t even know it.

They think they wrote the word for themselves, for their family, for whatever they are going through, for the joy of it and the very calm the word speaks into the bones of the soul…but they wrote it for me to see lit up in the last of the gloaming on this specific day.

And I receive the word.

And the weary, chipped and stained corner of my heart that keeps trying to heal, but can’t, despite itself, despite a lot of things, receives the word.

Fully.

Totally.

Now, I pass it on to you.

 

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2015/08/28/10477/