Graveyards...

At a ceremony I played today, a young captain berated the troops and audience with the memories of September eleventh, calling for the remembrance to justify warrior's fervor. The objective of the deploying troops he spoke to was Iraq, yet this would not even register as relevant for the most part. Something terrible happened within our borders, and now we must bring justice for the heroes that died that day. Let me say that that day was the beginning of a long, shattering year for me and was crippling in its gruesomeness. But there are many of us that realized that our country was experiencing something that the rest of the world has known for centuries and millinia: desperation, horror, cowering fear. On that day, I remember thinking with something approaching excitement that this country might become unified and simplified and engage in the sympathy that the world offered us and that we could possibly offer the world. What devastated me in the months, and now years, to follow was the blind rage the nation pitched itself into, claiming vengeance wherever convenience led. Yes, we should have gone to Afghanistan, assuming Bin Laden was even there after the full months lead we gave him after the event (and I'm sure he was gone well before it even happened), but how did we justify bombs when the search was for one man. Civilians in a barren wasteland of war-wracked desert were subjected to the mass executions that American weapons are designed for. And that's right folks: no Bin Laden. Yet the fear and the rage had transformed and gripped this country so deeply that there were very few questions asked when the same tragedy of 9/11 was used to justify deposing Sadam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction and human rights (oh wait, that was only mentioned later) were piled on top, but basically it has been the replaying of buildings collapsing on our compatriots, friends, family, lovers; a horrific wrong turned into propoganda justifying wrongs on a much larger scale. When will we properly mourn for our loss rather than remaining in the enraged stage of grief, making the world feel our pain exponentially? When will the people who burned and fell and suffocated in those towers be given the silence and peace that their deaths deserve? How many other monuments to death will we justify while ignoring the solemn emptiness in our own country that waits for wisdom and rest? When will this feud end?

Savior

Porcelain perfect beauty
Still your loveliness
Hold your locket in
My fist

Sing for me my child
Tender thougths of the wickedless
Muse of all my dreams
child of all my years

Be mine
Be mine
Alone
Sweet innocence
Sweet mine

Save me with your
perfect hands
Lift me from the water
Dancing around your feet

Rain untouched
Wind beautifying
Spirit of my desire
Chastening my will

Rose blood blossoms on
your lips
Fingers unfolding like petals
I want to pull you under
You want to fill me up

To the top of the ocean

And so I fall
I fall
I fall at
your feet

My little
My own
My sweet
My tender

Turn your face
And my breath becomes ice
Close your eyes
And my life drifts away
Away
Clutch of air and gasp
of nothingness

Can never be mine
Perfect never
alone

Out of Context

Last weekend, Tom and I visited my hometown, where we met. While there, we spent an evening with two very good friends discussing whatever seemed important with mugs of coffee to egg us on. Only one of us outright claims to be non-Christian, but the rest of us have become uncomfortable with the term and the connotations of being "born-again". Our opinions over most matters were quite varied, but the variance was one of the more stimulating experiences I have had in a while. The respect and fondness between the four of us made differences thought-provoking and challenging rather than irritating and demeaning. And I began to think, "Is this not what I have been looking for? Is this not what church might be if there is such a thing?" The institution of church has outgrown itself, has become a monolith of commercialism and legalism. But the idea of church - a gathering of people that are seeking - seems to be alive in the shadows of confusion in my generation. We do not know what to call ourselves except friends and we do not know what we are looking for except the thing that connects us all.

Context

I have not "belonged" to a church since college. The last time I went daily was during basic training, and you would frankly have to be insane not to take the opportunity of a full hour away from drill sergeants once a week. Furthermore, I do not even feel a desire to return to what I have known as church. The political wrangling and greedy moneylust that show their prettied up faces all too often in the "house of God" have become too much for me to stomach. I am tired of one man being given the authority to translate the words and intentions of Jesus to an audience all too generously named a "congregation". I have never been to a service where the offering plates have not been passed around at least once; must sustain the temperature regulation in the grand loftiness of the place of course. Even in England, I was appalled by the great care and wealth invested into the stony cathedrals that held so little spirit in them, becoming mere tourist traps with their cold resilient beauty.

All this, and yet I still feel compelled by something that I approached in certain of these buildings and institutions. Or rather, something that approached me it seems at times. The church gave me a name to call certain experiences: vision, Christ, a still smallness that could consume everything. I have seen in the cute Bible stories of my childhood visions of horror, and then again the horror revealing itself as shattering beauty. What was handed to me as lists to be memorized and obeyed and pray to god it's the right ticket has become a chimera of ever-changing wonder at the edge of sight. I rarely think of the commandments that I knew at one time and my behavior is guided by the single (yet evasive) principle of Love, yet the certain damnation I was warned of should I behave in such and such a way (as I certainly have behaved) has not happened. Instead I feel a fierce and violent Love following me and surrounding me and consuming me. There is nothing more that I want, yet I do not know where to find it. The church has become empty to me, yet nothing has filled the comforting position it held in my life for so long. Now, I am left to the wind and cry to this great terror and great love to catch me.

Ash Wednesday

It is strange that not eating would be so comforting. With the distraction of food gone for a mere twenty-four hours, such clarity (or maybe just mild hallucinations). Suddenly, empathy is easy. Love is easy. Irritation is impossible. The pettiness of my preoccupations lately is astounding. I worry about my reputation at work; with people that may be gone in a matter of months. People I'll never see again and people I have nothing (besides my job) in common with. While at the same time I am virtually ignoring Tom, and when I'm not doing that I am belittling him, antogonizing him, blaming him for minor annoyances. And how could I forget how beautiful he is in all ways. How could I forget the attention he gifts me with and a love that creates greater capacity in me than should be possible.

We cannot prove what is real. Dreams provide as much evidence to our senses as "waking", and it is nearly impossible to remember either one while in the experience of the other. Although one of the two tends to be more consistent than the other of course. Still, there is nothing to tell us for sure that this is here and this is now. I begin to think there is actually no here and now. Time always feels wrong and things that appear solid constantly change. I remember sitting on the side of a stream carved mountain in the middle of the Black Hills; cold, waterworn rock beneath my body and hands. It was as if I could feel a story and a persona seeping through the apparent silence and steadfastness of the stone. What is to say that all things are not just as sentient as everything else but in different frames of time and with different modes of communication and development. And what is to say that life and death exist even. Perhaps we are simply cut off from the consciousness that is us and is everything already. The distractions of our body and our senses and our acceptance of the rules of gravity and sequence and cause and effect keep us from the wholeness that waits for us already. Glimpses come to us in our sleep or when we are lost in ecstasy or pain or are simply hungry. We know that we are held captive by some trick of our own consciousness but it is too comforting. We know the rules of this "reality"; Truth holds no promises. Fairy tales and monstors could very well live there. Time may flow backward and forward like an ocean; rhythm in its essence, but sequence impossible and forgotten. It is terrifying, and no one beyond the age of five can even conceive of it properly. There is little nostalgia when I remember being a child; it was impossibly difficult to be in a world of people who knew the rules and didn't understand such a little one that swore dinosaurs wandered her suburban neighborhood. But if Christ did not mean such "naivety" when he instructed us to become like children, I don't know what he could possibly mean. I have heard it explained that we are to be innocent and unquestioning, but I have yet to meet a child that meets that description and I certainly don't remember being one. No, I think He meant that we are to question everything, even the fundamental assumptions of our tidy little universe. Always ask why and always imagine. After all, there is no proof that anything other than our imaginations exist, so why restrict ourselves to the rules that the majority of grown humans has agreed to. Why not imagine that love is possible, life is forever, and playing pretend was more real than the banalities we convince ourselves to live for.