PLAY MISTY FOR ME

We've had quite a week down at my local NA group.
There have been 3 members die.
Two died clean and sober, and the third, well, she died from the disease. That is to say, she OD"d.

One of the members was an old timer, 34 years clean, who made probably 5 meetings a week and was much beloved of the young folks. I didnt know until he died that he was my Great-Grand-Sponsor; that is to say, he was my Sponsors Sponsors Sponsor. I'll write about him in another post.

What I'd like to share with you today is about the 35 year old woman who also passed on, and passed on clean, leaving behind two children.
I did not know Misty well. I never once met her. I did not know her outside of Facebook. She attended a group on the other side of town, and we shared mutual friends in the recovery community. From pictures I could see she was pretty; from her posts and comments she was smart and funny, and she liked to write updates that reflected what the program of Narcotics Anonymous was doing for her, and share about the funny things her kids did, and she would post pictures of herself getting the kids ready for school and stuff.

On my Facebook page, I keep a lot of picture albums, like a tumblr of sorts. I have done a few posts and mentioned my album titled FULLY CLOTHED WOMEN before. I also have other albums named MY FAVORITE COLOR, and ITS NOT SAFE HERE, THIS ISNT HAPPINESS.
Another is called CRASHINGLY BEAUTIFUL, and it serves as a tribute and vehicle to post from a great blog by the same name.

Bear with me here.

If you can imagine, I get a lot of people that send me images all the time and they say "Maybe you can use this in one of your albums". The images are usually of what they what they think would be a candidate for the album FULLY CLOTHED WOMEN, that is to say, women without any clothes on. These images never have any real artistic value, or else they are 100% pornographic, and I just want to say to them :
"Why don't YOU post THAT FILTH on YOUR page"
But instead, I just delete them from my computer before I get infected with something.

Bear with me again, I'm about to wrap it up.

Back in September, I got a message and an image from Misty. She said "Maybe you can use this", and it was a wonderful image. I said yes, let me go find something to go with this, and it didn't take long over at Crashingly Beautiful to find a Thomas Merton poem.

So I posted it. Its the only image that I have ever posted that was sent to me by someone. Now Misty is gone, and I never once met her. It begs so many questions.
What did Misty like about the image? And what was it about the image that made her think I would like it as much as I did? All she said about the poem I put with it was "Perfect", and that was enough, but what else did she think? What was it about the poem that inspired me to match it with the image? Did it really fit? Does it fit any more or less now, with Misty passed on to her silence?

IN SILENCE

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”



–Thomas Merton, “In Silence”