trust | I Do Run

The starlight winks, as if it is a joke that it is crucial to finding the way. Is this? There is no beginning or end – the sky goes on and on and on – how do we know this is the right one to follow? Balthazar says this one suddenly appeared. Melchior observes this same one hasn’t wavered course.

Gaspar holds the compass in one hand and my hand in the other, “My dear, trust my friends, this is the one, He will be the one.”

I smile at him, my king and my love. “I will follow you to the ends of the earth, but this star, is it really that important? I see it twinkling, laughing at us poor mortals who follow without knowing the destination.”

Smiling, Gaspar leads me to the camels, “We will know we have arrived, when we get there.”

Hello, Readers! Merril’s Prosery Monday at d’Verse and Patrick’s Pic and a Word Challenge #271 – Starlight inspired this little story and brought me out of my writing drought. If you are a Christian, you might recognize the names used here although in the Bible, the names of the maji or where they came from or even how many there actually were and what they rode were never specified.

Merril’s prosery prompt also required the use of the phrase, “Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.” written by US Poet Laureate, Jo Harjo in “A Map to the Next World.” I changed the punctuation to fit the story, hoping to evoke the sense of faith and trust.

This sense of faith and trust is something that, I feel, is missing in our world right now – or at least in my world. Our state will be removing the mandates for masks at the end of this month. From then on, we will rely on the “honor system” – that people who are not wearing masks are fully vaccinated (as per CDC guidelines) and that if you are not fully vaccinated, that you will continue to mask.

I doubt that everyone who is not wearing a mask will be fully vaccinated.

As of today, only 45% of people in my state are vaccinated. That means it is more likely that the unmasked person in front of me is unvaccinated.

Without faith and trust that the people around me are doing the right thing and following the rules like I am, the honor system doesn’t work. Is faith and trust crucial to finding our way in this world? I would say, “Yes.”