Further Up and Further in

Ten years ago, on a day like today. I was just settling in for a movie. It was almost exactly this hour, or it was mid fire at any rate. Although that system for marking time would not be invented for another five years. It had been a long hard and lonely day like today. Full of arguments with college authorities, projects due with too little time to do them, and arguments with insurance companies. Almost exactly like today Ten years ago on a day not so different from today, I was feeling very lonely. All of my friends had graduated the previous year and moved away from our college town. And in my depression I had withdrawn from socializing online. had deleted my online presence, and only permitted two people to contact me from that life. Ten years ago today on this day that was indistinguishable from so many of the days before it and the days which followed. There was a knock at my window.

Had I been sane I would have pretended to be asleep, or busy. Knocks at my window at eleven o'clock at night, usually portended hours of thankless volunteer work, helping usually immigrant or other disabled students with computer science or other homework. I must have given assistance to dozens of people in those days. Only one of whom ever stayed in touch with me when my usefulness had expired.

Frankly I was getting tired of the thankless work on top of trying to pass my own course load with undiagnosed learning disabilties and mental health challenges of my own. But in those days all I had to cling to were my values, much like today.

Do not fail to give hospitality to strangers, for by this means some have entertained angels unawares. Information is power, and like all power there are those who would keep it for themselves. To share is to fight. Love is a movement, love is a revolution.

So I got off my tired ass went to the window, and gave an impromptu programming tutorial to a pink haired male athlete. The universe commanded and so I obeyed.

Ten years later on a day so like that day, my phone rings at an inopportune moment. But I gaze set the caller id and smile, and pick up. We talk for longer than we should ten years later that pink haired athlete and his wife are expecting their second child, and although it seems like the world has passed me by. Like I am stuck in place. His final words remind me that not all progress is measured in miles, or dollar signs

I love you M
You to, will see ya

I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

Aslan Lives!