Coffee With Kahlil

It was a day of irony and paradox, sadness and joy. So much yet little, in one solitary day.

I enjoyed the freedoms of my first morning of solitude; then felt the absence of father now far away.

I beheld a birth announcement of a friend’s first child, then remembered the pain of a friend who is dealing with his dad’s imminent passing.

I found myself swimming in a sea of exhilaration, having just sent another book proposal to a prospective publisher; then heard the sad tale of a new friend’s professional hopes swept away in the current of misfortune.

And I thought of a good man named Joe, mourning two parents both lost within one month, while I was spending the summer in the sun and the sand and the sea.

Such a great day for personal ambitions, yet such a sad time for those I know and care.

So I went to the coffee shop alone, with my new friend Kahlil Gibran, to exude happiness, and unleash silent tears of compassion.

I ordered a double espresso and sat outside, staring at another magnificent sunset, a myriad of colors and clouds and majesty in the evening sky. Then I looked down upon the maze of asphalt and concrete, with cars speeding and beeping, contesting for parking spaces, the masses walking lost in thought with heads bent down to the concrete. And I asked my friend Kahlil,

“We have so much and need so little,” I said to the departed 19^th-century poet from Lebanon. “We live in Paradise yet sometimes see Hell. How can people not even stop for a moment, to glance and smile, at the beauty around, and wonder above?”

“We cling to the earth, while the gate of the Heart of the Lord stands wide open,” my friend Kahlil said to me. “We trample upon the bread of Life, while hunger gnaws at our hearts. How good is Life to Man; yet how far removed is Man from Life.”

I took a sip of my espresso, and I thought about this day. Then Kahlil answered with allegory:

“Is not the cup that holds your wine the very same cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

My thoughts shifted to those of friends once embracing love, now suffering the tragic pain of loss. And I looked at the dying sun in the deep red sky that had brought such a glorious day, and felt a loving breeze whisper gently in my ear.

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?” he said. “And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”

I smiled, knowing such to be true. For all that lives, lives forever: the spirit has no end.

Then Kahlil added, “The reality of Life is Life itself, whose beginning is not in the womb, and whose ending is not in the grave. For the years that pass are naught but a moment in eternal life; and the world of matter and all in it is but a dream compared to the awakening which we call the terror of Death.”

I finished my espresso, and smiled through a tear. And Kahlil spoke once more:

“Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

“And when you reach the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

“And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

Oh how I wish Kahlil could be with those who needed him right now more than I needed him, those whose tears at this moment filled a deeper well than mine.

I finished my espresso as Kahlil said goodbye. He spoke his final words, and he spoke for all of us; for the friends who parted ways, for the lovers who lost love’s embrace, for the dreamers with mislaid dreams, for the parents who lost children, and for the children who lost mothers and fathers. And he spoke with conviction, and assuredness, and a promise for love tomorrow. And he spoke for all who were departed.

“Forget not that I shall come back to you. A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body. A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream…”