do not merely listen, a dialogue

I once was told that the Hebrew verb 'to listen' implied far more than a quiet admiration and a drinking in of words. To listen was to obey. If no action followed from the gentle stream of words falling on the tiniest bones of the body there was no listen.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so decieve yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word and does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediatly forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does."

I have looked:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ."

But I forget. I don't even intend to listen if all of this (see above) is required, if I must relinquish my desires. Shit.

I immediately forget the one who knows every mark of my body. I hold an epistolary of love every morning and sometimes spill my cereal on it, its goldleaf powders away I read its words so often. But I forget that I am beloved.

Then I catch a glimpse of you as I stand in the bus park at the LRT station. The woman on the bench quakes beside her grocery bags. The streetlights have just come on and the sky at the horizon is the brilliant blue of a half dark evening, a hue that fades to as black as the leafless trees that reach towards the overhead curve of the atmposphere in the shadows of the streetlights. This is beauty.

I have forgotten (how) to be beautiful. I listen just a little less these days it seems, only to forget my face just a little more.