BURNING INSIDE
\		I recently went to a park near my home.  I frequent the park often, as it is usually safe and pleasant to walk in.  But today, a friend of mine had said there was some crazy man preaching in the park.  Intrigued, I decided to go and take a look for myself.  Now when I got there, many people had gathered.   I asked a man what had been happening, he said the police had come, and tried to take him away.  So in defiance, he chained himself to the tree he was preaching under.  A huge tree that spanned nearly ninety feet in the air.  Its beauty had captivated me many a time before, making me stop and gaze at it for hours.  Still qurious, I walked closer to the scene.  As I got close, I heard a man shouting into the night.  It was inaudible at the distance, but you could feel the fire burning behind those words.  So full of life and so much knowledge.  But as I got even closer, I started to hear the laughter.  Almost all the people that had gathered, where laughing.  They thought of him as some crazy old homeless man, entertainment for a day.  I wondered to myself how none of them could hear the fire in his words.   What he was screaming, I could never actually tell, the words ment nothing to me either.  It was the life that mattered.  It filled my soul up and fixed all the holes.  I watched him for several hours, feeling the power that he once held, but was leaving him.  The man was dying, I realized.  This was his last want in the world, to pass the torch to another.  And if one, just one person actually listened to him, and understood.  He could die with peace in his heart.  And so when his time was up, and he collapsed onto the ground, dying in a pool of his own coughed up blood.  I stood and walked over to him, cradled his head and looked into his eyes.  Weeping I saw the fire slowly burning out, and all I said to him was I understand.  And he died in my arms, smiling, finally at peace.  And that is why whenever I come to the park, I have a mission.  I come to preach, to teach others what it means to be alive.  It matters not what I am preaching, only if someone out there hears my voice, and understands, then, and only then, can I die.  But the eternal flame that is life will be passed on to another.
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