Origin story

   It happened in October of 2006, but the story begins in September of the same year.  After years of hungering for love and enduring empty relationships in its pursuit, I sat in my truck, stared out at the Olympic Mountains, at the white sails speckling Puget Sound, and at the waves sweeping across the beach at Golden Gardens.  I opened my journal, dated the page and began to write; what poured out was dispassionate and uncalculated; thus began my journey with a promise to God that I would no longer endure a life without love.  Without consideration for little more than the pen scratching the page and the flow of the ink forming letters, I remembered the story of Julius Caesar and his murderous betrayal.  I wrote what are now the first flagstones upon which I tread on this inchoate journey.
   The promise was simple and dangerous: if God, by the Ides of March, had not brought love into my life, I would destroy His greatest gift to me.  Then, as now, it was glaringly clear that life without love is not life, but a living hell.  If I have a purpose, then God would heal my shriveling heart and fill my life with love.  I wrote that I would not settle for what the world calls love: that is, a mere feeling and fleeting sentiment, a simple physical attraction bound to decay along with the face and the body, or a convenience of economy in response to the pressures of legacy.  These are not love, they are merely the color and tint on the structure of love which by his Grace is given to us to abide existence until we are reunited with Him in his Presence; nor, certainly, are these pandering flourishes anything better than wishful metaphors for the foundation, that Love which is God, Creator and Saviour of all.
   I have sinned against God with this puerile and thinly veiled threat to take my own life.  I believed then as I do now that love is given freely, that its most beautiful complexion in human terms is altruistic, that it requires a commitment the strength for which only God can give, and that one must, by faith, nurture it and work diligently to preserve it by yielding to it anything necessary for it to grow and thrive.  Yes, of course, I digress.
   After this journal entry in September, I started planning and setting aside the necessary resources to enable me to see this plan to its conclusion, and I continued to pray for guidance.  My daily life continued as ever: cooking, cleaning, working, sleeping, laughing, opining, etc., and then it happened.  Late in the morning, near the middle of October, I heard the most appetizing voice I had ever heard.,,

(another idea for, So Nary a Song Said She)