The Beacon
How are you going to allow yourself to be found, if all you do is seek to conquer?
“She died eleven years ago.” John Doxill drank from his ceramic cup, speaking above the slight din of the surrounding upper crust coffee shop.
“Did you go to the funeral?” Tom Jackson took a bite out of his blueberry muffin, covered in butter.
“I learned about it years after the fact.” John put down his cup, sadness appeared through his face. “I actually did an online search and found her obituary.” He picked up a knife and cut his bran muffin in half. “She was married, ran a community theatre company in Vermont. She had five children. Her husband is still alive, he’s a musician.”
“You just don’t get over your first love.” Tom picked up his cup of coffee with his free hand, taking a sip.
“Even you? You’ve been married for how long?”
“Fifteen years, it is obvious your toast worked.” He sipped his coffee.
“May you both have a long, full life and a prosperous marriage. I still remember the words.” John smiled. “Maggie was not your first love?”
“No, it was Joan Crawsmith, I was in high school and we were pretty serious, but eventually we ended up going our own ways after we graduated. I went to Barrymore Univesity of Science and she went to Massachusetts State College/Enfield and we gradually drifted apart.” Tom confessed.
“Mary and I were serious as well, but then I got a promotion and she learned the truth about me that I never saw. Work to me is more important than anything else. How many times did I teach that to you?” John said and took a bite out of his muffin, then put it on the ceramic plate.
“Teach that to me?” Tom laughed. “You yelled that to me about seventy times.”
“I just did not get families. I can look back and see that I never married for a reason.”
“I saw that within the first year of working for you.” Tom said.
“Well, it is over now. I am fifty, retired and have nothing to do but look for the meaning of life.” John looked about the coffee shop and the many around him all within their own world.
“If you want the answer to the meaning of life, you know it is in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
“42” I know.
Tom smiled. “But if you want the truth of life: you don’t find it; it finds you.” He picked up the remaining half of blueberry muffin, taking another delicious bite.
“It finds you. I never thought of it that way.” John sat back in his chair appearing stunned by those words.
“It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you.” Tom quoted.
“Chaucer?” asked John
“Jesus, it is in the Bible.” smiled Tom.
“Oh yeah, I forgot how Catholic you are.” John picked up his muffin, finishing it in one last bite. “Truth finds us, we don’t find truth? Why have I never understood that?”
“Your whole life is about finding, conquering, succeeding, demanding, how are you going to allow yourself to be found, if all you do is seek to conquer. Isn’t the first thing a conqueror does is to get found on his terms. He is never surprised, ever. How can what you call truth find you, if you are all about not being found?” Tom finished his coffee and returned the cup to its saucer.
“I have to let truth find me?” John looked almost puzzled.
“Well, not like a hermit in the woods, more like a sailor at sea, aware of the imminence of a beacon that is begging to be found.”
“I don’t pursue truth, I allow truth to pursue me and make it easy to be found.”
“It is not that we love God, but that God loves us first.”
“Jesus, again.” John said.
“No, St. John, one of his disciples. You’re getting closer.” Tom smiled.
“So what is this beacon you talk about?” one of the rare times John said anything humbly.
“That is what prayer is, the beacon.” Tom felt almost stunned that he was evangelizing his former boss who never said God’s name without the word damn after it. “Calling out to Jesus and asking him to find you and lead you home.”
“I have never prayed.” said John.
“Neither, have you been lost at sea.” Tom picked his napkin dragging it across his mouth.
“Touché”
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