Around fifty two years ago a friendship sprang up spontaneously between myself and one of my wife’s relatives who was temporarily living with my wife and I so she could attend the University of Tennessee. We did not have much in common but at some point she started volunteering to help me with little projects around the house as she had done with her father at her home. I could not imagine why she would want to help me do such jobs and asked her about it. She explained her feelings and I explained mine. They were not the same but we accepted how each other felt. It was a good conversation. So, we had more of them, getting together to talk privately for 20 or 30 minutes a few times each month. We were emotionally transparent with one another because there were no commitments or expectations – neither owed the other any thing. We were free to accept the feelings of the other no matter what they were. We got together two or three times a month and talked for half an hour or so about our feelings but there was no physical desire. We never touched or did any activities together. There were no expectations or commitments of any kind. Eventually it became an emotionally intimate relationship. The emotions grew and became pretty intense. Yet it was neither physical nor spiritual (I did not believe in God at the time) and was based only on sharing the feelings we were experiencing, Neither of us glorified or idolized the other. What mattered was honesty, transparency and acceptance.

SPIRIT AWAKENING

Sometimes it’s never heard or even seen,
  Within the savage beast it does not stir.
From its deathless sleep there is no awakening,
  No joyous surge of life.

Sometimes it’s born to live but for a moment,
  One treasured, awful moment.
In the depths of some unsuspecting creature,
  It plays the timeless chords of life.
And for that moment the startled best is flung,
  Across the span of time,
  Far into another realm.

The creature’s glowing cat eyes seem to soften in the night,
The creature’s fearful growl is muted to a muttering, questioning sound,
  But only for a moment.
And then with savage snarl,
  It slinks again into the jungle night.

Sometimes it’s born and reborn,
  Once and many times again.
Within the human breast,
  It has many lives,
  And just as many deaths.
But every time it’s reborn,
  A better way begins to form,
And for a few brief moments the wondering man
  Is lost in its mystery and its storm.
But its ebbing life the fearful man
  Can not long maintain.
It seems to die once more and drifts away,
  But he’ll always know it came.

Once or twice upon a time,
  it will live within a fearless soul.
Fallen through ragged winds of sky,
  it will burn within and makes him whole,
  a life within that would never die.