What The Fourth Cache Said To Me

Sometimes the devil’s water brings life.
I am being torn apart, yet I am growing more alive.
I am beginning to hear and see things I would never have believed were possible.
Since these events began, I have lost my job, and been humiliatingly expelled from among my people. Tomorrow I will reckon with them.
I have been attacked and beaten, and left vomiting in the subway.
I have been almost drowned.
I have been almost blown apart in a gas explosion.
I have had the breath crushed out of my lungs.
I have willingly broken my marriage vows, and lost the ring that symbolizes them. I have insulted my wife.
I have experienced a new autonomy, a new self-respect, then hurt my most beloved one in order to retain it. I have indulged my anger and desire for revenge, and I have dressed it up as honesty.
Yet in facing death, in the play of lust in my flesh, I have found strength I never knew I had. I have turned basic urges – kill it, fuck it -- into spiritual weapons, those of earth and water.
In rejecting blackmail, in asserting my utter freedom, I have added the power of fire to those weapons.
In diving into the crowd to rescue that boy, when self-preservation would have had me stay sheltering and cowering where I was, I have, I believe, added the power of air. It is what I used, without knowing how, to calm the crowd.
I am growing stronger as I advance along the Path, though all this strength is only lent to me, is not my own, is not for my vanity or advancement.
It is for Adam, to help him to resist the corrosion of the parasites within him.
It is for Katherine, to help her on the lonely road I have driven her to. If her being with Adam will help him survive these ordeals, then so be it. But I will have her back.
It is for Terri, to help her overcome the hidden new fear I see in her.
It is for Horace, to guide and instruct me as he may need.
Other people are not hell. They are salvation.
There is a shape in my mind that defies words, just as the peregrination I have been on across Manhattan – the shape I have drawn on the city, the experiences at each waypoint – are drawing a shape in my soul.
I am seeing connections where none were apparent, lines and images of new harmonies.. The capacity to speak the language of the birds is awakening within me.
All this, to defeat those who have caused these ordeals to come to us.
I pray for my enemy, since praying for my friends is no virtue.
I forgive myself, for everything I have done has been necessary. I ask the forgiveness of others.
I am ready. I am alive. I will fight.