Cry Loudly

Feb 19 2000

Dear Josh

      I don’t want to miss you, Josh, but I can’t get up.

    My traveling companion yanked a soft and poorly formed scab off a huge wound on my heart, which immediately began gushing blood and is still bleeding. I’m afraid I will bleed to death in front of everyone!  Polite people visit but ignore the bleeding, or try to reason me out of it.  “Dear, it’s just your flesh you are trying to protect.”  Ha! How will healing will come to me? It appears I must die. It goes beyond my ability to reason, so I become unreasonable.   At worst, it appears that I’m being shaped into an old, calloused, loud, bleeding bitch who learns to shove back and spit in the face of that thing that keeps hurting her.  When I am vulnerable, I get hurt.  When I am calloused, I get room.  Either way there is no healing.  Who will bear with me?

    You see who I stand up for--We are so broken, and so damaged, and so raw, and so beyond the popular, cultural religion which is so impotent in the face of our shattered souls--we are the refugees.  I at least will be shameless, and stand up and cry loudly so you know where to find us--except I can’t get up right now.  Religious people have been trying to do what is understand poorly at best, and the results have left us in shambles.

    It’s nobody’s fault--I’m not blaming.  I own my errors. We are really all the same; children of a crippled and dysfunctional species; it doesn’t matter why.   But we have been taught to ask for others, and never expect anything for ourselves, and deep down, we know we can’t ask for ourselves.  It isn’t something we share.  Well, I am shameless and cry out loud. And this is all I have to look forward to unless you come to me, too, Josh.  Without you, I have no hope.  I know you will come to your people.  Please don’t neglect to come to me.

    All that I used to be, in such naive trust, has been broken or discarded because it wasn’t good enough.  Now I am bloodless, my heart drained limp, and that isn’t good, either.  It is purgatory. 

    Vindicate my faith, Josh, and rescue me before I am lost.