A Brother's Wisdom/The Art of Manifesting Through an Open Heart

     The night had a bite in its breeze for a change in the beginning of August when people are usually complaining about the heat and brown grass. Smokers had turned the party into an outside one real fast and some managed to complain about the mosquitoes. Never mind the smell of cigarette butts piled high in votive candle cups, some floating on the top with yesterday's rain. We needed the rain, no one was complaining. Maybe the trains were blasting their horns but nobody noticed because brother was in town and his jokes always caused laughing louder than a train's horn. One of the sisters was in a dark mood but beer can do that. In fact, beer takes the conversation off topic quick and I wondered how we went from Confucius sitting in a church pew to the state of homeless people.

    "You can't trust them, they're mean." Voices talking over voices, competing for attention. "That ain't true," my brother said. It's hard to convince someone who has a chip on their shoulder but she continued. "I gave a man a sandwich and he threw it back at me! Told me he wanted money," she said. "No, I don't give them anything and I lock my doors." I wanted to blame her attitude on Coors Light but brother was equally Coors lit. ,

    In his quiet and smooth demeanor, brother asked, "did I ever tell you all about the guy on the street who had a sign with the words cold beer on it?" "Man I felt so sorry for that guy and all I had was two bucks on me so I gave it to him and told him I wished it was more so he could run over and get me one too!"

    "Not me, I wouldn't have done it," she argued. "Well I'm sure glad I did it because do you know that every time I ran into that guy, he had a beer for me too!", he said. "Oh yeah, I've got another one! There was this Mexican man who came to work with us at a job site and he followed me all day for like two days bumming cigs from me. I started to get frustrated on the last day and all I could think about was man is this guy going to depend on me for all  his smokes?"  "You're too nice, that's stupid," she groaned. "Well, I've been in his shoes and I knew he didn't speak much English so I felt bad for the guy."

     "I bet he didn't feel bad for you!" she smiled. "That's the funny part guys! Did you know that every single day after those two days, he was always running up to me with a cigarette in his hands offering me one? It got embarrassing but he shared all his cigarettes with me for a year," brother said laughing. "What made him stop?" sister asked. "He went back to Honduras!" Thunderous laughing followed and before we knew it, brother had changed the direction of the conversation back to Confucius jokes and times when he was a Marine without a car somewhere in Tijuana Mexico having to share his only orange with his buddy who woke up before he could eat it. "Woo! I was starving and really looked forward to that orange but he was starving too." "At least I found my stolen car, that was good."

     "Speak the truth, do not yield to anger, give, if thou art asked for little, by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods." ~Confucius~

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