The Story of Five Minutes

(Apologies to Kate Chopin)

She stood waiting for the bus. A man, who looked to her to be half crazy, approached her and handed her a little, stapled bundle of papers that looked like a comic book from the 1980s. She thumbed through the five spiritual laws, or maybe there were four, and listened to the man drone on about saving grace and rescue from damnation. He said a Name…

Without her consent, her mind drifted to a place that dreamed of better times. There her apartment, where she lived alone, wasn’t so cold. There the job she hated was better and less deprecating. There she didn’t feel alone because someone always walked with her. There the poor boy that begged on the street corner by the bus didn’t have to sleep in a dirty alley. There today’s rainy day was a clear one, and the sky was always blue even when it was grey.

She wandered in this dream to a place where she actually felt fulfilled. This place was more like a state of being, one that she owed entirely to someone besides herself. She felt loved and was loved. She never had a need to feel guilty because she was forgiven and could forgive. She always had a reason to be glad and to share that joy.

Here she was a part of something. Other people knew her name and valued who she was, what she could give. No one lived alone and no one was left out. Everybody meant something for their own part.

And then she heard a voice, calling her name. Distantly, now becoming clearer. And then she felt her heart start to come awake, come alive, and she felt her heart embrace the dream. Her name was louder. The calling was sweet, the calling was nearer…

The thunder clapped overhead and she came back to herself as she ducked further under her umbrella. She acknowledged the rain and the sky that was always grey. The bus pulled up, the crazy man was still talking. She let the papers fall, sighed, and hurriedly stepped into the bus, ignoring the calling, forgetting that someone offered her better times, offered her a sky that was always blue even when it was grey.