Desperation

I am angry, my bones are brittle with contempt and failed dreams. My heart laments its existence with every beat. I am downcast and broken and my dreams are haunted by demons that leave me no peace. I used to fight, to brawl until knuckles were bloodied with insurmountable passion and zeal. I was a whirlwind blowing from the south, consuming every trial with a twisted grin. The seated boxer was my hero; my jaw was set like marble and I was not to be stymied or stopped, I was not to be contended with. My dreams were the womb of sustenance that saturated my being with solidarity and hope. Now I am lowly, I am deplorable. My voice of beckoning has become a whimper in the dark shadows of twilight. I am angry, I am hurt and I am very much alive. I have heard the wise talk of journeys and the transformation that happens before the end, in order that one might achieve that end. Here I am in a cyclical force of endless walking, of wandering from desolation to desperation and back again. I do not pretend to wise, or naïve. I know that in a single moment I have attained both wisdom and foolishness. Here though, I have become a fool with no redemption evident. I was foolish enough to believe, until my dreams were ripped from my chest and I lay down at night with a cold hollow in my soul, with want to be hallowed. I am a faithless man, born of bitter defeat. I have wondered if this is my event horizon. If I have past the crest of relative existence and I am being swallowed by an absence of light, doomed to be compacted into an existence that defies natural law, or law born from Theos. I am a wounded son, bearing my lacerations to my world, letting my screams ring clear as I walk into the sea. With every cold wave, every salt filled molecule of water, I have hope and a pain so deep that I would not pretend to define it. This dichotomy of hopelessness and promise is difficult. I want to let go, to lay down and accept the fate of ritual and purposeless life, I want to admit that I was wrong, that It is all a lie, but I cannot. Even in my want, in my angry and absolute distrust, I know that He is not a man that He should lie or the son of man that He should repent. I know that I am wrong. I know that in my state of rage and unfulfilled desire that He, He is so much more than my faulty belief. I know that this hope in me is not mine, some ill-fitted armor created in response to defeat, it is not some false notion of coping or a defense to make sense of everything. It is wholly everything that I am. I am not seeking council or consolation; I do not want words of affirmation or platitudes due to some sense social propriety. I am not screaming “look at me,” I could care less. I have found the midnight hour, I have found Ichabod. In all of this, I have found a burning bush that is calling me to away from something safe and established: away from the ewe and her lamb, down into the pits of Sheol, where there is no chapel bell to ring, no sound of church and no icons to find solace in. There is a whisper behind me, causing my every fiber to resonate in disbelief and fear, to fall flat on my face and scream, “though He has torn me, yet He will heal me.” I am angry and I have hope that the bright and morning star doesn’t mind my furor. My bones are brittle with contempt, but He is a healer. My heart laments its existence with every beat of muscle, but His words are life and truth. I am downcast and broken, my dreams haunted by demons that leave me no peace, but His gaze steadies my wavering peace…

lunar longing

The tumultuous thumps of chaos have left me in an exacerbated state of emotion. Details aren’t important, at least not the methodical and dutifully categorized ones. My details are that of breath and life, of color and storms. I have loved quite deeply in all manners of the word, just as shallowly as well. Of all that is love, it is the deepest, the purest and most beautiful, that can and will wound you into the fiber of your soul. “I have friend, one that I love, her name is the moon…”

My nights have been missing their moon, missing that glowing satellite of spatial mass. My tides have lost all crests and pools, my oceans have turned in sorrow as the rhythm slowly dissipated and I was left in stillness, in silence; A quiet so deep and so absolute that the echoes of sound crumble like Granite Mountains. I was told to stay away from the ocean, but who can really do that? Deep calls to deep, right?

I kept hope when I lost it, on nights when I was dreaming of my moon, the shimmer that happens in the chasm of your mind, where synapsis fire like pistols and electricity rumbles through the smoke and like phantoms, figures emerge, my moon emerged. I awoke to the waning of hope. There was a cry in my silence, a roaring whimper that took a subtle prick at my heart. I leapt from the scattered smoke as reality bruised my body, scraping against door and wall as I made my way out.

The slow scraping of water against sand left me in shock. Tides? Here, now? The ocean was reflecting rage and there in the sky was a waxing moon. Brilliant white light pouring down in a frenzy, then like a snuffed flame, it was gone.

There is hope in me again, deep hope. My wounds are still raw, my heart still faint, my ocean is still silent and my night is darker than ever, but I know that “having hoped contrary to hope, in hope he believed…” I believe too. I believe I can do this, that It can change, that the horns of the alter are in my hands, I will not let go. I will be given audience and my petition will reach through a brass heaven and echo out like the cry of the ocean roaring against sand, roar like deep calling to deep.