“Tortoises can tell you more about the road than hares.” Khalil Gibran.

I want to honor a friend who passed on to the next great adventure in life. Gary Harrison found comfort in the writer Khalil Gibran. He discovered him in prison and multiple times in a drunken stupor, Gary would quote to me words written by Khalil. I did not find them significant at the time. I observed the annunciation of those words simply as the ramblings of a tortured tired alcoholic.  Years later, my rediscovery of Gibran has led me to appreciate even more deeply the times I spent with my friend. 

Time. Depending on the context it can move swiftly or appear to have come to a halt. It is interesting at what points of life and even in a day we are cognizant about time. There are experiences of suffering in which we want time to move quickly and then there are those moments of enjoyment and pleasure when we desire time to come to a halt as we enjoy the beauty of the face, the aroma which dances upon our nostrils, or music upon our ears. We should want to take time and pay attention to what excites our senses. The precarious nature of Life should lead us to stop running or even briskly walking because of what can be missed. 

​A tortoise approach to life is not bad for our mental, emotional, or physical wellbeing. The ability to move slowly and dare I say pause, can offer the opportunities to see a little bit more clearly.  When I move fast, I will miss things. Variables which if I had taken the “time” to pay attention would have offered me more information to make a better decision or chosen different words. I can move like the hare. I can swiftly and decisively but is that or will that always be the case? My culture celebrates the hare because it appears flashy, exciting, and the take charge personality. The hare moves bounding from one point to the next arriving at its destination with the appearance of strength. Yet what if, over the journey, the hare missed the “why” of the journey? What if over the race of life, the tortoise discovered the answer to one of those profound questions such as “Why are we on this road to begin with?” Or “Why is this journey even framed as a competition?” Gibran saw a lesson of life in the slow moving tortoise which can be a helpful instructive to human beings, especially in the West. Slow down. Yes, accomplish what you have set as goals and move towards those goals not with break neck speed all the time.

Take moments to slow down, breathe, study the blade of grass, and the uneven nature of the road. The wise man or woman who has a better knowledge of the road will know when to move like a tortoise and then like a hare. 

You expose yourself in complete nakedness. I’m not  referring to the exposure of your physical body rather the clothed aspects of your mental and emotional wellbeing. Hidden behind the walls or boundaries meant to protect your true self, without hesitation those protections fall. 

​The manner in which you communicate is now different as you ask questions which will hopefully reveal more of yourself. Every word you offer and every thought which races through your mind are meant to increase vulnerability allowing the entrance of whose embrace you have resisted. 

Why would you choose to be naked? Why would you choose to reveal the innermost parts of yourself with the possibility of being abandoned and broken? 

Why would you choose love? 

I imagine we choose love because the alternative is becoming a person who is dispassionate and psychopathic. An individual who has closed the self off to the world and all of the beautiful tragedies which create empathy. The alternative is an individual in his or her own personal perdition. A life absent of love is pain and suffering consuming the individual and in time rolling like a devastating agony upon the lives others.​
Why should you love? You should love because the joy and pain found in the experience is a far greater expression of human dignity than the agony of remaining clothed. 

The situation of men and women who are experiencing homeless in our state and across the nation has become more apparent since the pandemic of 2020.  Individuals and families have fallen from situations of housing stability resulting from increased housing costs, medical problems, and an inability to find work commensurate to what was previously earned pre-pandemic. Men and women from various backgrounds are now in the lived experience of homelessness. In the state of Arkansas, 2,459 persons experience homelessness, finding some form of relief within either emergency shelters or transitional housing (HUD 2022, Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Program Data). The lived experience of homelessness is a touch point regardless of gender, ethnicity, or health situation. 

​Persons who are experiencing homelessness possess what John F. Crosby describes as being “persons who are unrepeatable” (Crosby, 2019).  Individual persons who have found themselves standing on street corners to secure coins for hotel stays, who are accessing various local nonprofit and faith based services in our county, or sitting in a public school, are not to be lost in the category of homelessness. These individual persons can not be replaced as objects nor ignored to satisfy our individual comforts. Rather, these persons possess an outstanding unrepeatable quality which translates into 2,459 individual stories and experiences.  Individuals who possess a dignity and richness which is obscured by our focus on the experience and the associated stereotypes. Crosby asks each of us to take a moment and look beneath the tired eyes, the aroma, and the disruptive classroom behavior to see the unique quality of the person before our eyes.

The last two years have admittedly been difficult. Individuals from all walks of live have experienced varying levels of difficulty regarding sickness, financial challenges, occupational difficulties, and social interactions. In my estimation, I would not seek to compare nor weigh which difficulty was greater than the other.  Individuals for a number of reasons confront difficulties in different ways but what is clear, individuals experience suffering. 

​Suffering impacts the physical, emotional, and internal self. An individual in the experience of suffering faces the dark night of the soul, taking the moment or long moments to assess him or herself.  I may not like what I see within myself.  The thoughts swirling in my head may be negative working to pull me further down into this seeming ocean of difficulty. At the same time, I may find within myself a determination which I did not know existed within me. It is this second revelation I want to offer as a precious find. 

​Suffering is hard. It is rough and such items can act as a serving instrument to reveal what is underneath. The rough and rugged experience of suffering acts in service to our individual lives to reveal what has always existed.  What can be revealed is determination, patience, boldness, or a number of other human characteristics which exemplify the beauty of the human soul.