hey little brother

Hey Little Brother,

I’ve been working on this email most of the day today, since I learned about this website, every since I lost my older brother to a blazing bullet emptied from an assassins gun. I don’t want to leave his memory behind, to waste away in the crest of forgetfulness without acknowledging a deep, abiding urgency before it fades away into a premature night like dimly lit stars next to the mystery of the moon. You should know that as soon as I felt his hurt, I prayed for you and all of our little and big brothers alike, seeking warm forgiveness and the hope the only faith can summon. I’ve held you constantly on my mind, with your sweet presence delicately weighing on my heart. I can feel its imprint pressing gently against my chest like the cushioned pillow of my lost brother’s memory holding me down. Can you feel my heartbeat?

I haven’t stopped thinking about you, Little Brother, though life for both of us has continued, has sometimes been difficult, and the duties of each passing day have embellished a new aptitude for novelty. Though time has not stopped, I have not stopped thinking about our joint manhood. We have an obligation to one another. My obligation to you is to be a light to brighten your tunnel so that you can find your way. Your obligation to me is to live in this light, blazing a trail through the shattered darkness so that our people can find refuge where you might lead. In fact, I find myself thinking of you more when I try not to. It’s amazing this feeling of contemplation because as you walk in paths we pave, I feel the sudden presence of years awake from time’s slumber, that if we can transit skies, if borders can collapse in the pit of great imagination, maybe . . . just maybe hope will bring your dreams closer to mine like sleep brings us closer to dreaming. It is a thrill to believe in the seemingly impossible—in a dream—yet it is a triumph of true faith to want to believe, to dream. I want to believe in you, and have desperately clung to the living hope that is you as evidence of this effort.

I have no diaries or secrets, only intimate thoughts that provoke careful questions. What will you be tomorrow? Will my eyes behold its beloved, my Little Brother grown older, dance with feet of pearls against the aging sands of intrepid connection? When will God grace unfetter your potential as a sacrifice to eternity where spoken wisdom is never lost in words? Little Brother, follow the narrow path that leads to eternal life. It’s the one shaped like the Ankh, paved in the ink of ancestral blood, stained with our mothers’ tears. I wonder about you when you are far away. Are you ok? Did you get enough rest? Are you getting work done? I wonder about your heart. Does is still reach toward excellence with an urgent stretch that might bridge the great chasms of our uncertainties? What does it need to grow and be healthy? How might I find it in the presence of the universe when I am set far away from you? I wonder about tomorrow. How will it look for us? Are we, your elders, doing enough to prepare you for the challenges of the moment?

Of course, such questions are senseless, prompting undue flagellation as opposed to the hope we find in patience. Why are we so desperately in a rush that we move through time so swiftly that we miss much of life, particularly the subtleness of its inherent glory. In rejecting the moment—in refusing to let the flutter of the butterfly linger or the awesomeness of the Sun wait, in deciding not to see the glorious mystery in the moon or appreciate the shadow behind the hidden stars, the miracle of the trees outstretched toward God, the greatness of fowl and the tender gentleness of breath—we choose to waste eternity. We become absent in this life like the pause of great darkness, the murky candor of chaos before order was formed.

I wonder about these things when I wonder about you. How can I find patience when I am tired of waiting? Can we stand to lose another brother? For already I feel like I have lost too many friends before they would know me, before I would know them. But why should I wait for them when I have you close to me now, when I know you are close? (A voice in my heart tells me that you are.) And this patience is the critical insight that informs all of your questions. Who am I? The answer lingers in experience. What should I make of my life? What is its purpose? The answer is known in waiting. Yet, waiting makes us uncomfortable, even if that waiting is for something wonderful. We ever seek constant affirmation . . . of love, of security, and a host of other things. But most of all, we seek constant affirmation of ourselves. Are we really here? Or are we tragic inventions of some greater, made lesser, imagination? How do others feel about us? Do the ones we think love us truly love us, or is it all a fraud, vanity, a meaningless affair, like chasing after the wind?

No one can give us answers to these questions. To truly live, to truly appreciate the moment and find solace and serenity in patience, we must seek answers to such questions by ourselves, or do something greater: entirely dismiss these questions in lieu of other, more productive frames of inquiry. How can I see the moment whole and recognize and learn to respond to the beauty that God has created in it? How can we activate the possibilities found in our waiting—hope, faith, love (the greater of these is still love)?  It doesn’t take a genius to know that something special has bonded us since the beginning when your eyes reached out to me in the words of Tupac and Wayne, when I first arrived in New York, or mentored you in Detroit, when there was only the Word “Love,” and She nurtured us as suckling babes together, swaddled us with heavenly garments to protect us from the chill of loneliness, from the chaos of humankind’s ongoing struggle with flesh and the invisible principalities that rage in our darkness. She is our God, and we are Her children, who find safety finally in Her mouth and each other in Her Words. And so it is written, “Maktub,” that in our patience we will inherit Her blessings, be caught up in Her winds. So I hope that it is true, that heaven is waiting inside you right her on earth. I wish to see it, so let me stare freely in your steadfast eyes, in a time of choked up memories drunk on Dewars and thrown up dreams, in a time where the God of small things recognizes the most miniscule of creations—us. And we recognize Her, as we recognize each other. It is all wonderful and beautiful and small and big, but essentially important. And She says, “It is good.”

I hope you will know that it is good, too, and remember me—and remember you, that you were made from God’s verbs and vocabulary . . . to do good . . . and like the sun  . . . to shine brightly.

Love Always Your Big Brother,
David E. Kirkland