Finally, I seem to be crossing over, coming to my senses. I came to; confessed to God, and God covered me. He covered me with blood. Blood of the One whose death relieved my sin.
I have embarked; God is leading me into unknown places; places previously denied, showing me things I could not have seen before, reminding me of the reality of the relationship, showing me that love is not a hostage to power.
But there is a big difference between the relationship and the convention.
The liturgy is not the reality. While I was learning the liturgy, I forgot. Something in me was lost in translation.
See, I am saved, but I am still crazy. My melody is still written in a minor key, and it is much too dark for many who have crossed over, or so they say. Perhaps they never fathomed the peril of the world. Maybe my insanity is an uncommon thing, but this bubble gum gospel embarrasses me. The smiling singing groups embarrass me with their squeaky cleanness and their gauche taste. I cannot sing like that. They are slick and shallow, and I am much darker and more noticeably insane, still covered with the deep scratches of the barbed wire hindering my escape.
Perhaps I have been expecting all this time to be mindlessly happy inside, like I thought you were supposed to be, or maybe they told me that and I believed them. And I am not. Not mindlessly. I quicken to the minor key. Saved or not.
It has something to do with the end of grief. It is appropriate to grieve over the immanent and calamitous death of the earth and all it holds. There is the end.
When Jesus showed himself to his disciples after the crucifixion, he showed them his scars and the nail prints in his hands to prove it was really him. Oh...Oh! Even saved, I still have the marks, to prove it is really me. Still dark and crazy and grieving over the immanent and calamitous death. Incapable of denying it anymore. Unwilling to argue it anymore.
You know the world will destroy itself, because that’s what it gets down to. So do I, but we never admitted it because we were too scared. Or we were too busy. Too interested in next year’s fashion, or the house we want to build, or the children we love. Too busy seeking out the swamps we frequent when we feel too clean and gauche and civil; too aware of the paradox of life and death, good and evil, too rebellious to admit defeat, too ascetic to care.
I too will die. I may yet grieve for the demise of all that is, that dies to me when I die to it.. Even knowing earth awaits a redemption just as I do, I may yet grieve for her grievances. I may grieve into insanity, watching this world as I do in the frenzy of death denied, in the numb fear of destruction. Even if Man denies it, the rats will swarm the rigging because the boat is sinking. So I reel under the weight of that event like a drunkard, spinning and wafting like a junkie to whom salvation is a good trip; a dream, vaporous in the face of the paradox I struggle with. I am on my deathbed, and sometimes I am incoherent. My mind doesn’t work right. Insanity and trusting God, who, after all, is bigger.
My grief used to be colored with brilliant hues of outrage when I was resisting the inevitability of insanity and death. The outrage of youth which has just begun to live; the outrage of a child under the capricious or numb thumb of its parents; the outrage of an adolescent watching the grownups defile themselves and everything around them; the outrage of the soul against the slum of the flesh.
Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, prayed in anguish of spirit, and great drops of sweat rolled from his brow. That is where I am. The crucifixion looms closer than the resurrection. His disciples slept, one translation says, worn out by grief. They were crazy. What a priceless admission that scene is. That is where I am.
My grief is not colorful and brilliant anymore. It is not tainted with outrage. Its eyes are not rent with paint. It is a dark night that will culminate in betrayal and crucifixion. Only then, after betrayal, and humiliation, and forsakenness, will I be enfolded in the arms of the only One who can comfort me for all my grief and insanity and fatigue; who alone can wipe the tears from my eyes. It is not yet, but it will come.
In the mean time, I witness Nature yielding to those who litter her stage with broken glass. I watch my comfort perked and profaned and asphalted and mutated. Everything between us and him will be destroyed, even divine creation, until there is nothing for us to put between us and him, and even then, will we deny him, curse him, curse ourselves, and attempt to escape in Armageddon’s arrogant suicide? Ultimately, I guess I grieve because we deny God. Earth, being his, is simply the object of our contempt.
I too must yield if I want that Comfort, but there is grieving to be done before the yielding. These times, and the earth; crowns of thorns. I must bear grief and anguish until I can yield up and die weaponless, harmless, surrendered. The grieving and the surrender are the finish.
I have found my place in this great body. I am salt tears.
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