Imprinting Love: Lives uniquely Real

Remembering..

From somewhere in 2022 till his death on 02/13/2023.

In the last months enslaved to my sin and living a lie, Maarten became my neighbor and friend.. this gentle man, comfortable in his own skin was a picture of who I once was. His was a journey toward death by illness and celebrating soulful life; mine an illness living a spiritual death, my soul synthesized by hyped sexual desire. I will always Thank God for a friend who helped me remember my hunger for simply being human.

There comes once in life,
maybe twice or even thrice,
One whose very presence gives life
to a soul fainting of fear.

One whose spirit is
both tender and curious,
the strength that comes
from facing places unknown,
In good health and bad,
a philosopher priest,
Looking for the meaning l
between and within
good fortune and the sad.

Such was Maarten for me,
a skeptical believer
in goodness;
In search of God
who is believable
precisely because
all that is good
can only be,
If at the heart of all;
Of the heavens
in which Maarten
worked and
dreamed, and;
Of his precious homeland,
Itself an ancient miracle,
harnessing the wind,
pushing back the sea, and;
Of his beloved Marci
and her family, now his, and;

Of a new home and neighbors
whose very ground
seemed a sacred space--
Where pasta and friends
can meet.

What Maarten and I shared,
The gift he gave me,
was eyes and head and heart
to see anew
the Jesus story
as if never before told
unfolding inside the storms,
the wind and sea
of his fragile boat,
"Master, wake up, do you not see?”

Only to hear the Divine
once more speak,
"Peace, be still.”

Thank you, my friend,
for your stubborn courage
to believe,
what I no longer
faithfully lived.
In the midst of my own
broken spaces,
between a masons water garden
and the Sanctuary you filled
with music and conversation,
my own heart was strangely warmed
by what is really, real.

Terry Mattson
03/04/23

https://youtu.be/lM_Qo7pzT_c?si=jvcbSyq7FSKqrhWQ