… yes, my friends, we’re all decked out in grey here at The Manor, and I couldn’t be any happier. You cannot really know me without first understanding the “grey” of it all, how I earned the endearing title of Miss Red Hook 1922, and why FOG is my other favorite color.

Faith And Perspective.

The fog doesn’t scare me. It’s neither ominous, looming, or haunting. Within it’s mist, I feel a cosmic hug from every moment and creation that ever was or will be. It’s cryptic, ethereal, and POWERFUL, like The One Who ever charged me to solve the great mystery in the first place:

WHY? Why do we suffer? Why is there pain? Why is there heartache and death?

Indeed, I’ve discovered the answer to that question, and here it is, my friends:

THERE ISN’T ONE!

Not needing to understand is the understanding!

Amidst all the fog is the Nirvana I’ve achieved as I’m free-falling off this cliff with truly blind faith that everything’s gonna be okay, not having to worry about all the details, and believing with EVERY fiber of my mortal being that The Cosmos WILL catch me in the end. It’s “nothing”, and “everything”, and “ALL OF IT” at once, like the oxymoronic carnival of joy that is my INSANELY BEAUTIFUL LIFE!

My truest prayer for anyone reading this is that if you haven’t reached this pinnacle yet, you will before your journey here is over. When that day comes, you will never be falling down again … you’ll only be falling UP … and the fog will whisper the silent rhapsody of God singing you these words:

I wept as I saw you aching, broke as I watched you falling, and suffered as I watched you struggling to get back up and find your way to Me through through the fog. You couldn’t always see me, but I never left your side, and now that you finally understand that you DON’T have to understand “everything and all of it“, you’re standing at My high cathedral walls where nothing about your journey has been meaningless or small. I love you, Child. You are warm, well fed, and at peace Here.

WE FALL DOWN

Cursing every step of the way, he bore a heavy load to the market ten miles away, the journey took its toll. And every day he passed a monastery’s high cathedral walls, and it made his life seem meaningless and small. And he wondered how it would be to live in such a place – to be warm, well fed and at peace, to shut the world away. So, when he saw a priest who walked, for once, beyond the iron gate, he said, “tell me of your life inside the place”. And the priest replied, “We fall down, we get up … and the saints are just the sinners who fall down and get up”. Disappointment followed him home, he’d hoped for so much more, but he saw himself in a light he had never seen before, ’cause if the priest who fell could find the Grace of God to be enough, then there must be some hope for the rest of us. There must be some hope left for us, ’cause we fall down, we get up …”. {Bob Carlisle}