I am not a whole person. I don't have peace (peace: totality, completeness, fulfillment, soundness, wholeness, harmony, security, a freedom from disturbance), I don't have joy, I don't have over flowing love, I can't even make it up to have happiness most of the time. I have the face of a whole person. I shove it in my backpack with my books and my papers and pull it out when I have to talk to friends or acquaintances. Occasionally, I forget it and then people get the full front of the brokenness. Like the Phantom without his mask, I overreact, I rage, and I use many more words than are necessary at the time. I'm busy turning over tables while the blind still need healing and parables that need telling. In other words, my friends, it is never a righteous anger and never what the Spirit wants me to do.
But before you start prescribing Prozac and recommending good therapists, let me explain. No, there's too much. Let me sum up by using an example. I felt I was being ill-used. Whether I was or not is immaterial- it's not my place to say what's just and unjust with respect to me unless it can help someone else stand again- but I thought that I was and so I stood up for myself and, rather vociferously, told my friend that if she still wanted my help, she'd have to treat me in a more respectable manner. I felt justified and I walked away a little different, though not relieved like I wanted to be and not happier like I thought I might be. Just justified, like whatever tiny wrong that had been committed had merited an veritable explosion.
I have words. I use words. I don't always mean what I say. Does this make me a filthy hypocrite? Why, yes. Yes, it does. I complained about people wanted me to change my schedule to fit their needs, yet I've been known to enforce a little bit of my schedule on others. I'm a little too busy- I think 40 days in the literal desert would be a wonderful vacation about now and it's the second week of classes. I also complain about other people not working as hard as I do, but I know that I spend a little too much time harvesting my crops on Farmville and I know that right now I'm wasting a good couple of hours that should be spent reading the myth concerning Ba'al for my Hebrew Bible class. But everyone needs a break, right? And I want everyone to put forth an acceptable effort, but I also know that I don't want to try anymore. I want things to fall into place again, no sweat off my brow. Lazy, slovenly, useless hypocrite.
Ah, you say, don't be so harsh on yourself. Well, who is going to be harsh on me, if not myself? It's not acceptable to waste what you've been given and be less than you can be. I wasn't made to sit on the floor and wonder, I was made to fly. And so were you. If flying takes all that I have and more, I'm OK with that, because there's this infinite repository of things I can't manufacture on my own, like courage and strength and love. Now my own problem is that tiny little, baby little hiccup: I have no clue where my keys are.
I don't know how to find God. I don't know how to pray- everything I think is too brash and everything I say is too formal. And don't give me that mess about there not being a right way to pray- there's certainly a wrong way because goodness knows I haven't been in the right spirit to talk to the Lord in a long time. But I need this. I need the peace, I need the patience, I need the hope, I need the life that comes from knowing God better today than I did yesterday. But I can't get at it- maybe just because I want it for me, because I see what I do and I don't want to be that anymore. But I also see what I can be and how that can help and surely that's not as selfish as it sounds?
Ah, God, I would run to the desert if I knew that You were there. If I knew that the pillar of smoke was going to guide me along, I wouldn't care if you drove me in circles until my children's children rolled their eyes at the idea of a promised land, as long as I knew that You were there, that You were the cloud. I would run away at night, leave the pages to be read behind, and just go stare up at the heavens and be reminded of the sublime, of the holy, of the glorious definition of You that I find written up there, if it would help me find You again. I don't want an image, I don't want an idea, I don't want something flimsy that the world can beat down with logic and 'reality' and a thousand other hope-killing things. I want You.
Come save me. I run to the cathedral, but the door's been locked and all I can do is knock until my fist bleeds and I fall asleep in the rain with my back to a pillar, hoping that it will remind me of why I was willing to run up those stairs in the first place.
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