Dear Readers,

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It seems clear enough that life decrees its own logic and is generally unmindful of what individual human beings do or do not make of it in regard to its eternal progressions.  What I made of my daughters’ lives and deaths 22 years ago was cold indifference on behalf of a cosmically detached Creator. The razor-sharp delirium that sliced up my sanity sent me kneeling in many houses dedicated to that same Creator and praying beside many a wounded, doubtful, and trusting soul. Some of them had been blessed with greater faith, others cursed with bitter resentment, and a significant few endowed with discerning prophetic vision.     

Had my daughters’ deaths not pushed me into a deeper exploration of spirituality, I likely would never have taken the plunge on my own. Therefore, today, among other things, I consider their lives and their deaths as a unique and powerful catalyst in their father’s life.  As I wrote in Cautiously Approaching Remembrance, had it not been for their brief sojourn in this world, I would not have written the letter, composed before they were born, that follows. Hopefully, it is worth sharing at this time because so much of what it says remains relevant to humanity’s present as well as its future. Therefore, I present it now as a small gift from Serenity and Jefferina (whom I preferred to call Cass after her mother) to the world:

Dear Serenity and Cass—

The knowledge of your forthcoming arrival has brought with it an assemblage of joys and fears that buzz constantly like a static charge beneath my skin.  I have never––once I became conscious of all that the world is––been eager to bring a child into this world because it has not been designed for habitation by flowers as delicate as infants and toddlers.  This place we call the world would be an accurate reflection of a chess board were that game a thing of sentiency. As it is, it represents a reasonable construction of what a chessboard might be if its pieces lived: kings an queens sacrificing pawns to attain the passions of their discretion and non-discretion; knights losing their virtues to the caresses of deceit; bishops trading in their god for the blood-stained sword. No, my words are not pretty, but they would not be because I am speaking of the world you are preparing to enter.

On this planet there are some seven “known” continents. They each contain a myriad of life forms, including that known as homo sapiens, the description granted to yourselves. However, in your life you will encounter those who seek to deny you that simple reality for any number of reasons or excuses. For example: because you are black, female, poor, rich, beautiful, unique, and so forth.  These attempts at depriving you of your humanity are known as prejudice, discrimination, or murder, depending on the form taken by the attempt.  Human beings make these attempts against other human beings usually out of a fear even they do not understand.  

But we were talking about those human beings who inhabit the seven known continents.  One might think they would live as neighbors in seven houses on this single street we call Earth, but they do not.  Instead of exchanging brotherhood and sisterhood, they have developed an overwhelming fondness for throwing bombs at one another.  The way of death is something of an international sport and extremely popular among those who wield power. The way of love appears to be mostly a fable told to pass time in between the sounds of explosions.  And this is the primary reason I hesitate to welcome you to this world, even as 18th century slaves were hesitant to welcome their offspring to a life of slavery, a pause that often convinced them not to extend such a greeting.   

A world of hate, darkness, death, and fear.  There are those who would say I am a pessimist, or cynical, because I acknowledge this reality.  They associate recognition with resignation, which is erroneous.  If I wave a banner at all, it is not for despair but for awareness. 

Awareness of so much ruin and destruction. Yet in the midst of that swirling miasma, joy pulses like an overcharged lighthouse at the thought of you.  Why?  Because I have said that ‘love appears to be mostly a fable…’ Your key word here is ‘appears,’ for it was love that entered the bodies and souls of your mother and myself to give birth to you.  I am a living reflection of joy because you are children of Love, daughters of  a self-contained divine harmony, children of a beauty that bombs cannot destroy...

Aberjhani
© Excerpt from The American Poet Who Went Home Again