Its cold out here, freezing, and lonely - oh, so desperately lonely. You walk by. We smile, but you ignore us. You're in a hurry and we can understand. The music is playing. The wonderfully lit tent beckons, its heat radiating at the entrance but not penetrating the dark night. We long for the tent. We can see the dancing. We can see the laughing. We can see the smiles and the hugs and the kisses. We wish to join. We long to go inside, but we have no invitation.
Moving now to the tent window we look inside. You are there, playing with one another, teasing one another in happy appreciation. The food is on the table in front of you - heaps and heaps of delectables, steaming hot and fresh. We have not eaten in weeks, months, we don't even remember our last meal. And you are gorging yourselves on food, filling your belly, and laughing about how it all tastes so good. Our hunger gnaws at us, physically digging pits in our stomachs, ravaging us with pangs so real that we feel weak just watching this display of plenty. We can't help but feel the envy and the anger as we watch you eat, but it only makes the night colder.
Around to the back of the tent now and we see the servant's entrance. The servants are happily working, rushing forward with trays of food and wine, washing dishes in hot, soapy water, standing in the warmth of a coat check stand, listening to the choir on the box in the valet. They seem content for having good honest work. They are not hungry. They are not cold.
And through the back flap, finally, we can see the head table and the Bride and the Groom greeting their guests. They are beaming with a love so pure that it hurts to look on their joy. And we are overcome with bitter tears, tears of pain and suffering, tears of a loss so final, so devastating, that we know we will cry ourselves to sleep tonight and every night to come for all eternity.
This was supposed to be our party. This was supposed to be our wedding. But we threw the invitation in the trash with all the junk mail. And it never occurred to us to ask for another invitation, knowing full well that the host would gladly send as many invitations as was necessary until we came to the feast. We were too proud, too obstinate, too full of our own self, to admit that we had been wrong.
We long for warmth. We long for joy. We long for friends. We long for food. We long for fulfilling labor. We long for love. We long to join the party. We long to join the feast.
But we have missed our invitation and we will never have any of these things again. We shall be forever on the outside, looking in.
2 comments:
Nice piece. The parable about the wedding guests is one which gets to me, along with the wise and foolish virgins. Knowing that there are lose who will have the experience you describe, causes deep sadness in me.
I actually started to write this as a contemporary piece. I think there are many people who are on the outside looking in and for many different reasons. I, myself, feel that way sometimes when I see people happily in love. It kind of feels like you're standing on a sidewalk looking through a window into a fancy restaurant and watching other people eat. Not only do you become ravenous watching them, but you become dismayed when they complain about the food they have.
But in writing this piece, I kept coming back to the idea of the wedding feast. Here all are invited. Again and again. So there's no need to be on the outside looking in. And yet, we all know people who would choose the cold over the warmth any day. They will be very lonely on the day of the feast while the rest of us are inside doing the Hokey Pokey and YMCA.
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