There is a room painted soft white.
There's a window to the woods, and the only sounds are the second hand's mechanized ticking and muted birdsong from beyond the pane. Splashes of warmth and color from the brown leathers of fine furniture set against the walls, rich wood tones of the chairs and table illuminated by a dim yellow flickering candlelight invite you come, take a seat, ease your mind and rid yourself of the demands, desire, disasters, and calamities and slip into a state of unadulterated rest.
And yet, is the simple act of sitting and dozing into a stupor true rest?
Is rest truly restoration?
How can you be restored, in your bones, blood and marrow?
Is restoration to be made new again? You are not new to this life, nor have you been since birth. You will continue to bear the scars, feel the aches, carry the weights and pull against the tensions of that last confrontation, that sneaking feeling that things just aren't right with you and yours, the worries of the future and all that you want to be for those around you and all you long bring into the world all falling to ruin before it begins and then eventually, all to nothing.
The tension and the pain branches out within, like a worm in your spine, a parasite puppeteer, pulling upon nerve endings making your walk crooked, your step cockeyed and your posture frail. Until the psychosomatic pain ceases its dwelling in the metaphysical and settles fully into temporal, tangible chronic agony.
Have you adorned yourself with a millstone around your neck like a deserved mantle? Have you allowed the worm a place in your spine, to spread and populate your veins with its progeny? Perhaps you have, since it seemed better to punish yourself rather than face the pain that seems worse. That of admittance, of asking forgiveness, of stepping willingly into the drudging depths of your shame and worse yet, letting the people you love, respect and admire watch you take that mud bath, and all the sapping away of dignity that comes with such an act.
But the truth lies in the liar.
The mocking voice from outside the window who sits on high, hidden amongst the branches of a forest dead and dry, feathered black sheen as a clouded night devoid of moonlight, beady eyes glinting with gleeful derision. The voice whose echoing calls breed dread and fear and tell you it is better to languish on your own.
But what if you silence the voice of the mocking crow? What if you take up sling and stone and knock him down from his proud perch there upon the spindly branches of a long dead tree? And you make a fire with the debris knocked loose. And you roast this lesser raven.
Then you eat the liar. You eat crow.
You admit fault. Recognize failure. Receive forgiveness.
And as the liar digests, you are restored.
The room remains, it's name known to you now. Restoration.
And you it's renewed resident, find rest within.
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