"No, No, We'll Have No Talk of that Sort"

Crushed

His words fell slowly but retained a definite feel and appearance of weight and force.It was as if the tension in the room created a thicker than water atmosphere for his words to sink through. The tension magnified and gave clarity to his words; the reduced speed at which they fell from his lips made me anxious. I was nervous for what he would say. I wouldn’t actually know what he said until his words fell completely and were caught in the net of my ears, traversing the paths of my mind and ultimately resounding in the depths of my soul.

“I feel heavy.”

Profound. 

Based on the environment from which such words were uttered, I knew my friend was not simply commenting on the heaviness of his own person or the weight of his own greatness. His feeling heavy was more in regards to a feeling of oppression. Something outside of himself had placed itself on top of him and had begun to bear down hard on him. I immediately thought of a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft in darker days. Her friends would take the door off of her own home, laying it flat on her. Rock by rock they would crush the life out of her. Something like suffocation. I imagined the thoughts that must have drifted in and out of her mind. The feelings that stung her heart over and over in the sight of her appalled friends and frightened neighbors. She knew she wasn’t a witch. She was merely a victim of the circumstances. 

My friend assuredly felt the same way. Crushed by the weight of unsung judgment, imagined or otherwise. It was too much; he wasn’t sure what to do. It was the type of heaviness that didn’t immediately destroy a human being. It was a slow force that pressed the life out of a heart little by little. 

I thought for a moment. What would I say to my friend? 

I looked at him. Is it possible the answer isn’t a removal of the weight but the replacement of one weight with a greater one? I told my friend to step into the highway and get hit by a Mack truck. I told him to inch his way out of safety and get hit not by a real truck but by a weight - the weight of immense glory. That sort of weight hits so hard and so swiftly the target rarely knows what hits it. It’s not the sort of weight that he was feeling, the kind that slowly presses the life out of the heart. Rather, this weight strikes with such force that it becomes one with the heart; it revitalizes the heart and makes it new.

The result is a new thing. The result is one that’s been crushed to beauty. 

The Cock’s Crow

I once watched the sky.

Gazing for a sign

Nothing but shame came.

For others mocked

They ridiculed Truth

Claiming foolishness was an understatement.

People grow old here

They never change at all

Stationary, sterile, and hard are their hearts

Locked in time and space

by an unbelievable yet unforgettable legend

Their identity bound and locked.

As the first drop fell

Silence came, and then a rushing,

Their voices shuddered

A cock crows

He’s not bringing the dawn

A betrayal is sounded

Shame flees for something more profound

He’s greeted by sorrow

Her eyes flow, and the rushing grows

Afloat and preserved

He’s watches the sky

40 days later the cock crows again. 

The Ache

I often imagine or create a highly dramatic picture in my head of something terrible happening, a death or someone walking out on someone or something of that nature. The scene always ends with one of the individuals crying out, “no.” Sometimes the cry is long and loud and it’s as if everyone in the world could hear the agony in the character’s voice. But sometimes it’s just a whimper. I silent stab into the circumstances, hoping that things aren’t what they actually seem to be. It’s a hope that behind all the make-up and masquerades of the world, the problem doesn’t really exist; people don’t really walk out on other people; people don’t actually die; Dads don’t fall out of love with Moms and children don’t make life altering, even life destroying decisions. 

The problem with the scenes I create is that they often put me in quite a melancholic state. I’m actually depressed when I think of these things. The interesting thing is that I’ve not ever actually experienced most of the scenarios I imagine. Yet, I’m painfully aware of these things existing all around me. I’m aware that even if I removed the make-up and masquerades of the world, I’d find a place far more broken than I could imagine. 

In the wake up this reality, I acknowledge that while ultimately I’ll experience this place as it should be, I’m not meant for this place in time. These circumstances are foreign to the deep cries and desires of my new heart, of my new mind, of my new spirit. In fact, the brokenness flies in the face of all that I know my world, or at least the world I’m meant for, to be. It creates a deep ache - a physical, palpable ache. 

There’s something being away from home that destroys a man bit by bit, little by little. His options are simple. He can go home and be whole. Or he can attempt to make a foreign place his new home, hoping it will satisfy him. I cannot and will not settle for a place of such brokenness. So, I’m going home. When I get to get there, I’m fine with that. Patience and I continue to travel. We sojourn and camp together wherever we may go. Together we charge down the road in a desolated scene, with only brief and momentary glimpses of life - life nonetheless. And sometimes, sometimes we cry out together, “No.” Sometimes it’s a loud strong strain. But most of the time it’s a soft whimper at the ache that accompanies us in our shadows. This is what it is to pilgrim. This is what it is to know there is something better we’re headed towards. This is what it means to know there is a goal. 

So we keep going even when the ache is strong, tears and all. 

Come to RUF tomorrow night! Robbins Chapel @ 8 pm :)