Sometimes things seem so clear. The voice in my mind that murmurs thoughts centered by myself, is my own voice. No matter how righteous it seems, it is only my own counsel. The voice in my heart that whispers of path, and world, and right and wrong, is the voice of Christ. I do not think He has ever whispered to me of me, not directly, not specifically. It is always other, always outside, always bigger than the smallness of “me.”
I am no one and nothing. I am anonymous and honored to be so. I am atoms, cumbersome, compared to the elegance and grace of demiquark and boson. Just when I think I understand, just when I think I can claim a knowing, there appears something, some untheorized particulate that challenges everything – physically -- that I know -- my own personal Y(4140). Only my faith remains unscorched. Only my heart in the hands of my Christ stays the same, now then forever.
It is like this:
I stand in the knowledge that human beings have the capacity to twist the truth and deny logic. They bend reality to suit their personal desires. They justify their behavior by pointing fingers at anyone but themselves. I have, perhaps, known only two people who do not use this self-comfort/self-defense mechanism – my grandmother, Rae'sol, and my friend and publisher, Jennifer. They are (or were, in my grandmother's case) brutal with themselves and with everyone around them. They slice through pretense with truth like Christ's own sword. When someone else might say, “You can't get blood from a stone.” They say, “This stone has bled enough.”
My grandmother lived and fought during an ethic/religious cleansing that tried to eradicate her. My friend exists in a world that hates businesswomen and finds it easy to blame them for everyone else's creative and economic failures. Both of them have been obsessively loved. Both of them have been vehemently hated – even by those who once professed to love them.
The truth, the brutal, unyielding truth, is only valued when it tells us what we want to hear. After that it becomes the enemy and the messenger must be destroyed.
I think of these two women now and I think of one other person. My father. He often twisted reality to deny truth. His glass was always full no matter whether it stood before him or lay shattered across the table. His eyes always turned to the light. He turned his back to any shadows. The world was not black and white. It was blinding gold. It was forever the divine reflected in a hundred thousand drops of dawn dew. There was no silver-lined cloud. There was no cloud. There was only gold.
What kind of soldier do I want to be? What kind of Christian? Can I function – no... can I rejoice and fight and dance and laugh and march forward, ever forward – if I am always faced with the truth? If I always must carry the truth? The truth weighs so much. So much more than the mist of lies or the thin veils of justifications. Passing the buck, after all, means you don't carry it any more.
I speak calmly. The two people before me – live, not in email or on the phone – are littering me, tag-team style, with profanities like I have never heard. They are tearing apart everything I hold sacred. They are as certain of their truths as I am of mine. So... are they right? Have they found cracks in me and mine? Do they actually know when I do not? Should I question everything because they are so... damned... *loud*?
It is so easy to get angry at someone who is helpless to hurt you back. It must feel so good to throw punches when someone else's hands are tied. It must make someone feel so powerful and justified. Personally, I wouldn't know. Christ didn't raise me that way. Shame on you who know better. Wake up those of you who don't.
If you cannot get what you want, you'll take your payment in blood. I don't believe in hell... but still I think a special circle awaits people who play that way.
I am starting to hate that word. Justification. I would much rather dance. It seems a bit of a joke among my friends. “Where is Angel tonight? Dancing, of course.” They smile because they might as well be saying, “Where is Angel tonight? Praying, of course.”
It seems sometimes that this world is full of people who act in ways that stun me. I stand and blink my eyes in the flames of their disregard for each other. I am horrified by their inability to recognize a decent person. What hope can I have for the human race if they do not even know an angel (no, not me) in their midst? What hope?
Night falls and I am standing at the coastal bluff that I love. Am I unstable? Yes. I am rocked by this world. My eyes rest on the ocean. The water is on fire with sunset. The wind... she smells like salt and sea and everything wild and dangerous. I like it here. Alone with my Christ and my bike and my music in my ears. “Now that we're alone, can I make a request? Will you make me number one on your playlist?” Here, standing here, I can let go of everything that awaits me in my inbox and my mail and my day-job minutes.
Christ? Can you bring this – this peace, this sacred place – to everyone who hurts the people I love? Can you give them this moment in their tomorrow? Let them know this untamed love. Let them cry out in revelation. Let them see the face of you.
It is easier...
It is easier to hire a lawyer than it is to offer a helping hand.
It is easier to throw a rock... or a profanity... than it is to throw in the towel or accept responsibility.
It is easier to blame someone else, doubt someone else, hate someone else than it is to do almost anything else.
I do not know these things to be true from personal experience. But from what I witness in the world, they must be.
A Godless country? A country of people unable to create community with its lack of homogeneity? Are we? I hear this said so often. But this is too easy, as well. We are not Godless... how can we be? God is standing right here, and there, and everywhere. But I think sometimes we are so busy screaming, or shouting, or searching for blame, or searching for justification (there it is again), that we cannot hear anything or anyone divine. I have never known divinity to shout.
Christ? Shout for me.
There is a bass line and rough beat that rocks up through my boots and shakes my hips and spine and shoulders and throws my head back like a strike. I have never danced here. This club by the sea. It is the Sabbath and I am looking for my release, my fix, my Christ who lifts me, moves me, explains the world to me, just His own simple gamer grrl who wants to change the world but can barely understand it. He has given me comrades to march with me; I see their faces. My heart pounds as if lifting from chest. He has given me adversaries that are tangible and complex to challenge me. He has given me this beat. He has made me clear.
“Well, you know Eliza Jean... she's not the sharpest spoon in the drawer.” Laughter cut short by the sound of a crack – a fist meeting a face. I turn the corner. You are standing at his chair. He is holding his face. There is blood. You are fiery and alive. The muscles in your arms and neck stand out. I cry your name in anger. Your head snaps to look at me and your lips are drawn back from your teeth. You are beyond words.
Why was I mad at you? Because Christ says turn the other cheek and instead you turned his cheek? (Claude's, not Christ's.)
The cliche: “Geesh, does she need to get laid.” Meaning, a person is way too tense. But really what we mean to say is:
I wish for you, in this moment, when you are beating me, my loved ones, my everything into an unrecognizable mess... in this moment, while you tear me, and mine, apart and down, and to pieces... I pray that you will someday... will right now... find some peace in something, anything, other than making someone else bleed.
It is easier to pray for friends than for enemies. If every enemy is just ignorant to the truth you offer in your hands, it would be so simple to just educate them. Not so simple when they choose to be deaf and blind.
Before you strip me of my rights and steal everything holy from me and mine, would you like to stop and read 1500 words? There are several blogs here to choose from. Or perhaps just these four words?
I don't hate you.
...
But my Christ has never asked me to just lay down and take it.
EJ
