Cattails calling, purple flowers,
down by the pond
Waters ripple, something supple,
snake passes, gone
Wings are flapping, slowly rising,
heron moving, gone
All is here, all is perfect, teach me,
sacred pond
Take me higher, swimmer, flyer,
closer to the sun
Bodies come and bodies go, I will live forever
That’s the promise, freely given,
down by the pond*
I remember the words to this song of Stephen's because of its origin and unsuspected later help in healing my heart. Fired as manager of an advertising department, bought off with a year’s work as their courier, he had driven too early on a Friday morning to a client’s office that wasn’t yet open. Taking out his guitar (an old Martin), he was restringing it, sitting by a pond, when a stranger stopped to question him.
That past Sunday, we had attended “The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity Workshop with guest, Rev. Edwene Gaines, at Hope Community Church and written down what we’d like to receive within a week; Stephen wrote “a new guitar.” When we left, he was sure he’d have one. Now explaining to the stranger that he was a singer and the songs he wrote he sang only to God, he told his listener about the workshop, adding that he knew he would get that new guitar. Two days later, in front of the congregation, Stephen held up his new Martin. Telling how the stranger had said “Come with me” and at his bank had withdrawn a thousand dollars, Stephen closed his eyes (as usual) and played—fingers and body emotionally vibrating in affirmed faith and joy.
Within several years, Stephen passed away. Looking for ways to gentle my grief in honor of my love for him and for the spiritual presence he brought to my life, I found help in a verse from Down by the Pond—“Bodies come/Bodies go/ I will live forever.” I asked myself, if I truly loved Stephen, believed in him and in the words of his songs, how could I not now know more love than grief? A new kind of love, I then felt, was my answer.
My realization is, “Waiting inside us is an answer for when we feel lost not having one. If we are open, wait, and listen, one may come to us. We may not understand it, and that will require faith. If we ask within if this is truly the right direction then the new question may become, “Will we follow it in trust?”
*© Stephen Michael Camp