Maple Spring Church Road
Anno Domini 2016

SUBJECT: A Prayer for Ground Truth
Thomas Young, son of the sister of my father, with contemplation I now bring to you these words with prayer that they are received by your higher self, that timeless place within of wisdom and understanding wherein resideth Divine Presence. These words are placed, after contemplation, on paper here in the place where I was born and where I now reside here in the hills to westward of the great Tanasi River which moves beneath the waters, even now in the truth of its watercourse way. Cicada is here. And Crow; and wren; and thrush from deep wood. Sometimes hawk circles. Whippoorwill calls at evening and through the night; owl will speak. And katydid. There are a thousand voices, timeless in their resonance thru years.
We share this, you and I. There are connections between us of relation and experience and I had great respect for you for much—no, for most—of my life. I believe our commonalities are such that we can communicate with one another and be heard.
Thomas, if through some unforeseen course of events, I were to move just down the road from you and promptly decide that even though you and your neighbors had been living in that place and working the land for generation upon generation that you were inferior beings and that in my superiority I was going to call the land after my own name, would you be pleased? If the Inmans and Bobbie Foust, to honor history, tradition, and sense of place, and with respect for the generations who have lived lifetimes and walked upon and toiled alongside this road, were to bring the matter of my attempt to the consideration of County Fiscal Court and the magistrates were to rule that I could not call the place after my own name and yet I persisted in my willful efforts at self-aggrandizement, would you be pleased to be dismissed as inferior and unworthy of consideration? If I were to boastfully proceed to self-report my own unofficial and inaccurate information in hopes that it would be picked up through my persistence, would you be pleased? If the official records were to duly list the now-official designation of the path by your door, and I were to enter the name layer of the GPS system and in my hubris scratch out a vanity plate to maintain my desired self-naming in this virtual space, while reading to you again and again and again Psalms 49:9-10 from Book of Common Prayer, would you be pleased? What would be the thoughts of your heart?
Sincerely,

robert
of the house of Collie