Imagine that you have been dead for a year, ten years,
one hundred years, a thousand years . . .
The grave and night have taken and kept you in that silence and dark
which says nothing and so reveals absolutely zero . . .
In the middle of all this darkness and being alone and bereft of sense,
let us imagine that God comes to your still soul and lonely body and says:
"I will give you one minute of life.
I will restore you to your body and senses for sixty seconds.
Out of all the minutes in your life, choose one.
I will put you in that minute and you will live again,
after a hundred, a thousand years of darkness.
Which is it?
Think.
Speak.
Which minute do you choose?"
And the answer is:
"Any minute. Any minute at all!
Oh God, oh sweet Christ, oh Mystery,
give me any minute in all my life."
And the answer further is:
"When I lived I didn't know that every minute was special, precious,
a gift, a miracle, an incredible thing, an impossible work, an amazing dream.
But now, like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Morn,
with snow in the air and the promise of rebirth given,
I know what I should have known in my dumb shambles:
that all is a lark, and it is a beauty beyond tears, and also a terror.
"But I dance about, I become a child,
I am the boy who runs for the great bird in the window,
and I am the man that sends the boy running for that bird,
and I am the life that blows in the snowing wind along the street,
and the bells that sound and say live, love,
for too soon will your name which is shaped in snow melt,
or your soul which is inscribed like a breath of vapor on a cold glass pane fade.
"Run, run, lad, run, down the middle of Christmas at the center of life!"
Ray Bradbury, Christmas 2008
