PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I was given another miracle last night, and it reconfirms to me that this stage of my life---which I believe is its last stage---is a time of final preparation before I head starward to meet my Savior, my loved ones, Swedening, Alexei and Kolya, Matthew Shepard and Francis LePointe.

In college, I majored in History, with an emphasis on Ancient History, and a very strong interest in Greel and Latin Poetry of the Ptolemaic era (in Alexandria) and the late Republc and early Empire of Rome:  my ultimate goal was to be able to work among the excavations of the catacombs of Rome, and other burial places of my spiritual ancestors, the Early Christians.  Upon graduation with a BA in my Major, in June, 1980, During the summer of 1981, I was accepted into the Ancient History graduate program of a major University in my state, and my lack of practical knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages---which were not taught any more at my college---did not impede my acceptance, as the graduate program waived the requirements in my favor (stating that I could pick this knowledge up as I moved through the graduate curriculum).  Upon receipt of the acceptance letter, I was informed by my parents that they would not contribute any further funds for subsequent tuition.  In those days before the internet, I had little access to scholarship/grant information.  My student loan burden was far too heavy, and due to my parents' middle-class income, I always just barely failed to qualify for the scholarships and grants that I could find.

In February, 1982, I entered the banking/finance business, which began a career lasting until 2004.

From the summer of 1981, I have always resented my parents (both of whom are now deceased) for this decision on their part that frustrated my academic ambitions.  I know, now, that they would have been able to assist me financially without much inconvenience to their own comfort.  I believe they made this decision based upon two prejudices:  an almost perverse delight in frustrating ambitions that I expressed independently of them; and a disappointment in several of their nieces and nephews, my cousins, who had gone on to graduate schools with results that my parents found "disappointing"---even though that was none of my parents' business.

So, I kept this resentment of my parents as paramount among my many resentments.  To me, this was a deliberate obstruction of a career and vocation that would have, I believed and hoped, affected me positively on several levels---spiritual, professional, scholarly---and also would have brought me tremendous personal satisfaction.

Last night, as I contemplated this for like the millionth time since the summer of 1981 (nearly forty-three years of festering), that still, small voice (1 Kings 19:12). which has ministered to me from time to time since I first heard it in 1974, spoke to me and asked me, in very clear tones:  Would you really have wanted to excavate, and therefore disturb, the final resting places of your spiritual ancestors, the Early Christians?

The realization that this brought to me seemed, suddenly, so clear, so right and just, and so comforting that I sat, in the darkened room, with my eyes wide open and the laptop screen glowing, and understood that I had just been given a miracle of being relieved of a burden of resentment that has ridden my back since the summer of 1981.  For the first time since that summer, I was no longer aggravated at my parents on this particular subject.  (I still have several more, especially their interferences in my first attempt at romance, and their relentless mockery of most things that I held dear), but this one, a major one, was now resolved and wiped away.  In the immaturity of my twenty-third year of life, I did not realize that my motivation for that choice of career, and the scholarly accomplishments that could have arisen from it, would have been realized at the expense of dsturbing the tombs of my spiritual ancestors, my spiritual family.  Now, in my less immature sixty-fifth year of life, I realize now, and in the most dramatic way, what I did not have enough common or spiritual sense to know in 1981.

I believe I will meet the Early Christians, including Saints John, Stephen, and Neaniskos, soon enough; and I will be able to learn from them, face to face, what I would have been searching for during the disturbance of their tombs.  I am glad, and thank my Lord and Savior, that I will not enter Heaven laden with the guilt and memory of having placed my scholarly ambition and historical curiosity above the undisturbed peace of those Early Christians whose tombs I might have disturbed.

J-Called