Dear Pneuma,

Autumn is falling here. Light is golden. The air is crisp, cool, yet bursting with vital energy. Autumn is an apple. I walked in Autumn today. I smiled at people and wished them a good morning. It is a good morning here.

Walking was a purpose. Walking was exercise for myself and my black, four-footed companion. Walking was fresh air and strangers passing. Walking was people's personalities written in their yards. Walking was people's affluence or poverty laid like a chess board along the city's streets. Walking was a street ending in a cemetery larger than any of the houses I passed. Walking was wrestling with contradictions

One Diction says, "Nothing in the world is free. We all have to pay our way."

One Diction says, "Love is free. We cannot pay for it."

I know both Dictions to speak truly. The world requires of us, but no earnings can be applied to Love. Of the two, Love is the newer idea. I know what it is to pay my own way. I know what it is to pay off all my debts. I know that I can do without the things I cannot purchase righteously, but . . .Love?

Pneuma, this is hard for me. Gifts freely given mean that someone else has paid my way. Gifts given "just because" mean that I received something for nothing. Love is source of all gifts. I don't know what that means. Gratitude seems too small a return, but I have no way of earning something of equal value.

So, I walked and wrestled with guilt, or maybe unexpressible gratitude, for the freely given gift of freedom from work-freedom from always paying my own way; freedom from debt; freedom from the need to do without. I wrestled with the contradictions, and decided that, for today, I can be of two minds. Part of me will continue to believe that, someday, I will be asked to pay for all of the gifts I have received. The other part of me will wastefully, recklessly, dangerously believe that gifts given, products of Love, will never have a cost.

Love Always,
Cobalt Dreams