Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, September 20, 2007


THE BAT
The bat loved my belly button. It flew out of it when the caverns were no longer enough. Thousands of other bats ignored me, while my bat ate my thoughts and carried them south to the mountains where Cochise, the Apache, painted his face to resemble the flat-nosed rattler. My bat made it back into my hands that night, its beeping reminding me I left my jump rope in the shower, the sweat and pounds lifting higher than the line of bats encircling my car. When I went to bed that night, something motioned to me to start running because the bat that loved my belly button knew more about my body than I did. When the cloud of bats disappeared by morning, I found my lone bat crushed on the road, tire tracks lining its wings to resemble lifelines on the palms.

- A poem by Ray Gonzalez, poet, born in El Paso on this day, 1952


What’s the Bat?? Come on - you can do it!! Read the poem carefully, thoughtfully - just the way Scripture should be read. Read it with an intrigued spirit, with a sense of wonder, with an understanding that anything is possible!

Your thoughts are perfectly valid and fascinating. I’ll share mine. My “take” is that the Bat is “God”. Is What- Gives-Us-Life. Belly-buttons are where we are connected with the womb. “God” knows everything about us. And when we get to the right moment, “God” leaves, flies out. Can’t be confined any longer. Needs to beckon us on to new possibilities, new understandings, new dreams, new levels of comprehension. There we meet Cochise – face painted - who is the Warner/rattler. Oh, the Bat whispers, Come on into the Unknown, the Mysterious, the enticing, that which makes our Beings tingle with anticipation!

The Bat returns - and demands that we rise “higher that the line of bats encircling my car”. The Bat knows what we are capable of, what we need, what we MUST have to grow into our Humanity.

Eventually, we stride out, full of ourselves, confident - and the Bat is flattened on the road. The Message? We have wings! Parts of us we will end up with “tire tracks lining its wings” - that’s the way Life is. But we, WE! Ourselves, will be flying. Soaring on to new adventures, discovering new dimensions of Being.

Do not be afraid of the Bat that loves your belly-button. It is what will give you wings, give you the Life for which each of us has been made.

Brian+