The Thin Red Line

 

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,

                              --Rudyard Kipling                    

 

I have often wondered to myself:

What is this war between people? What is it that makes them unable to ignore wrongdoing? How can they harbour ill feelings? I can't.

 

It's a thin red line we stand behind.

 

Try as I may, I have been unable to condemn a behaviour which seems to stem from self-preservation in the face of a wound given by another. One has to heal. Though I'm sure I cannot yet fathom a quarantine which eliminates the perpetrator from the life of the wounded.

 

I think I have begun to be bothered by a new truth.

 

First, we know we are knicked with depravity and will inevitably partake in immoral action. Second, we know that if we surround ourselves with people then they will suffer from our self-motivated deeds. We will hurt their trust, their hearts, and we will negatively alter their lives. The unavoidability of this does not make it easier to swallow for our victims. The facts will e'er remain that we did not have to do it.

 

I can take heart in one thing. As much as I obsess over winning the approval of people, I now realize this is an empty practise. People do not have the capability, for the most part, of moving past some irrevocable pain. God does. This does not make the person who does not wrong or lesser, nor does it mean they have not forgiven. It is yet another deficiency in the human heart and head.

 

While it reamins that some will truly love you no matter what hurt you inflict on them or people they love, others simply find themselves unable to do so.

 

I will lose my favour with people. Probably sooner than later. If I believe that, then it becomes important that I live in such a way that pleases God and not man. Because man is incapable of a certain level and a certain consistency of forgiveness. So when wrong is done, it is our responsibility to approach the victims, apologize, beg forgiveness, and subsequently carry on knowing that God knows our heart in all its filth and he knows the plans he has for us. He is the audience for whom we should strive to please.

 

Christmas Eve

I have been given the opportunity to become very, very sad.

 

Every person born is afforded the same option. Many take it. It comes in arcane suits asking us to please take a sip. The sip straddles a gulp which is in turn embracing a galloping swallow. I became faint at merely the smell. It danced into my chest like a swaying harem of buxom women. They dropped charms around my sternum and it spread like gleeful galaxies and almost astro-cries. There was a folding inside my face and I felt it until I was completely clay. What would I gain from a taste of this. Could I just touch my lips to the rim of the glass? Could I make myself put it down after that? I don't know.

 

There are things riding around us. There are buses we can catch and others that we maybe can't. I waved my thumb at a passerby, here, in my room on Christmas Eve, and they sped by. Certainty never stops for me. But transgression screeches its breaks with an open door and a bust of fresh air from the door as it hisses open. A man stands there winding me on with his every offer. I am a squinty, scared boy. Opportunity appears in heavy hazes. It pixelates me until I feel like I'm part of the mirage. I feel welcome in the disconcordant speed. I wish you would all leave me here. Heroics never touch anything warm.

 

There was this record that played this axiom: "They're Only Chasing Safety." I wonder what else we are only chasing. Maybe I am only chasing righteousness. I'm maybe only tripping over my own feet. Or maybe everyone's feet. Maybe humanity is trying to trip me all at once and as a result I can walk over all of their feet with perfect poise. The cement is slowly being sucked out of my solid soul. What strength can do that? I can't be sure, but in the empty pockets it leaves behind I feel like I never have.

 

I am the bad one in a whole gym of good ones. I am the unpracticed no one. I leave in my truck and I head to the woods. (I do this in my room on Christmas Eve). When I arrive I pull a gun from a sheath across my back. It is greased and black. The barrell is innocent but in the hands of me. I am not innocent. I am guilty as the bullet that pierces me (who else would I hunt but me). I am a villain wanting to try harder but shuffling trylessly home. I am consoled. I don't deserve to be consoled.

 

I have the opportunity to shine.

But that opportunity doesn't come to visit very often.

 

I'm in my room and it's early Christmas morning.

I am a cripple with a heart wrestling to rise. I am a cotton man, pulled apart.

 

I have the opportunity to be very, very sad.

 

Instead I think I'll be thankful that over miles of myself and my own pathetic attempts at doing life decently, Jesus had the opportunity to do the unthinkable and he did.

 

I'll take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas

 

and, next year things will be different. Things will be better.

The Quixote Project

Don Quixote is often referred to as the greatest story of all time. In summary, it relates the tale of a man who believes his life to be a great romance which he has read about in his books. He traverses the surrounding land picking fights of honor, winning over ladies, acquiring honor. He embodies errantry and chivalry. The drawback to his misadventures is their truth. They are completely fabricated.

 

Besides the expository nature of this blog, I occasionally dabble in fiction. I enjoy fiction because it affords the opportunity to create. It is a playing field for one's own wishes or ideas or regrets. It lends passage to stray realities and their respective plots and characters. I am (in theory) the master of the fate of each and every entity on which I choose to bestow the allowance of birth and a life thereafter.

These worlds, of course, lie entirely in my mind. My adventures may be had from the comfort of an easy chair. No one could know what battles were fought behind my eyes or what romances brewed in the back of my brain. I own, in this awkward stage of existence wherein I totter on the edge of adulthood, a certain air of respectability. That is to say it is only decent that I decide to keep these fancies right where they belong: in my mind.

(And I am certainly lost in my mind often enough).

I sometimes remember my life as a child. I regret my regression into a world entirely of my own making. Still, it is incredible to witness in retrospect a person who could become so totally lost in a made-up world. I could even believe that these false worlds were true. The state of my mental wanderings were ineluctably true. What we believe is our truth.

It causes me to wonder, if in my young life, without the still limited experience and knowledge I have now acquired, I could invent worlds of considerable detail, then what, pray tell is my mind currently capable of?

There is no dignity in the project of which I'm sure you have guessed that I intend to endeavor. It is a journey into unfettered imagination. I will unbridle my pride and let my mind loose and allow my actions to follow suit.

What then would the childish play of a non-child do for my own literary hopes?

I'll let you know.

I shall play pretend.

God Shopping

I was reading one of my favourite authors the other day, Don Miller. He's sort of like this pop theologist that says real casual things about life and existence. I was reading from his book "Searching For God Knows What" and he wrote this:

If I weren't a Christian and I kept seeing Christian leaders on television more concerned with money, fame, and power than with grace, love, and social justice. I wouldn't want to believe in God at all. I really wouldn't. The whole thing would make me want to walk away from religion altogether... [I would think],their God must be an idiot to see the world in such a one-sided way. The god who cares so much about getting rich must not have treasures stored up in heaven, and the god so concerned about getting even must not have very much patience, and the god who cares so much about the West must really hate the rest of the world, and that doesn't sound like a very good god to me. The televangelist can have him for all I care.

As much as I love my boy Don, I had to pull a pen and write in the top margin: It Doesn't Matter. It really doesn't. It's like we are all missing the concept of God. Is He not an all-powerful personality? If you believe there is a God, then it doesn't really matter what you think about Him. He's God. It isn't as if you could argue with him, and say "hey I don't like the way you operate." I mean I feel as if a lot of people are trying to tell God that his idea of goodness is a little off or that in order to be just he needs to change his methodology. It's like arguing with Dickens about the thesis of A Tale of Two Cities. "I should know, I wrote it," he would say.

If you ask me, we're lucky God is good. If he were not, it wouldn't matter a lick. You can't ignore God. You just can't. He is everything.

I was talking to my friend Barefoot Brian at Lee one day at lunch as we spooned our sherbert out of coffee cups. I like talking to Brian because he is really smart and isn't judgmental. We were talking about our problems with the Christian faith. He began to tell me why he decided he was an agnostic buddhist. He said he believed in God, but the way we claim kindred to that God is different for everyone. I told him that this way to paradise and higher knowledge is awfully convenient. I told him that for all we know it could be convenient, but it also could be, in our books, unjust, unfair, difficult, foolish, or evil. I told him I didn't think it was, but if God was God then it didn't really matter if I thought he was good or just. If goodness or justice existed, it was because a supreme being wired humans to attract it or repel it.

Once my friend Lila and I walked to the park as she smoked her cigar and we talked about a similar subject. We thought God might have favourites. I've never liked this notion, but it's not about what I like. It's about the truth.

If you believe in God, then you can't believe that he is something you can shop for. There is no off-brand God. There is only one. There is no, better buy, none more durable or longer lasting. There is no "as seen on T.V." God.

There's only God and He is who He says He is, and who He says He is, is good.

Ephesus

To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, I know your works...your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you:
 That you have left your first love.
I have a friend at college and he really loves people, and by George, they love him right back. He is my social rival. I say this because I look at life like it's some elaborate movie with characters and that's where he fell into place. So I conjure this imaginary competition between us where we attempt to sequester the love of our friends one from the other. And he always wins. But the truth is he couldn't care less, and I think it's heaps of fun.

Somehow summer became, and with it the colors of my home were sucked from township Portrait. But other colours spewed, fell, and leaked into the little province and one of those colors was the summer residence of my social rival. I was in his room and I told him my story. I told him my sickness.

He knew. He knows.

"Do you remember what John the apostle told the church of Ephesus?"

Of course not, I haven't cracked a Bible in months.

But I found out. I read their mail.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
I want to be good. I try to do good. I try to love people. I try to watch over them. I try to answer their prayers. I try to forgive them. I try to advise them. But I don't have a place to do any of this. I don't have a place for my head under their foot, much less a hand in their heart.

So what? So I did something good one time. People write me poems. Several people. I read a poem recently that was accurate for a change and so did my social rival. We know that underneath a composure that's sickeningly calm there is a broken, lost, confused, sorry (for everything), apathetic, and lonely man.

Call me Ephesus.

Ephesus was the mother church to the others.

I always put the kids to bed before I take up the bottle, and I always sober up before they wake.

We are all connected by the same Roman road. A load of nerved up, pagans puppeting, staggering, and knocking heads in the dark in search for a temple with a little light. I used to feel as if I should pray for people. Now I only feel like they should pray for me. Pray that I will find my first love. That I can believe. That I can love. 

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.

Today Ephesus is in ruins, and its church is gone.