Heaven's Cattle Prod

You know that feeling when your heart jumps nine inches into your mouth and you're standing there with your heart pounding between your teeth, praying the other person doesn't see it, and trying to talk past the bloody, beating thing?

Some call it vulnerability. I call it heaven's cattle prod.

All my life I'd kept as far away from that feeling as possible, wrapping myself in layers of independence like fluffy down quits, insulating my fears with rationalizations, and ducking into shadows whenever authenticity threatened to shine its caustic beam on me.

Rachel Weeping

One woman packs away the pink box half-filled with clothes and stuffed animals, gifts purchased for the daughter she named but never held.

One woman gets a phone call and falls on her knees, a knife's point cracking her breastbone to dig deep into her heart.

One elderly mother stands at the grave of her middle-aged child and wonders how.

One woman takes down four plates from the cabinet and bursts into tears.

One woman hears sirens in the middle of the night and starts to pray.



I've never given birth, but something in me trembles at the sight of a bereaved mother. I grip my empty womb and try to fathom her depths of pain, failing utterly.

Elizabeth Stone wrote, "Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

Thoughts after the death of James Foley

On television, on the Internet, from friends and family, we hear the "news." This "news"—a kaleidoscope of sensation, a spectacle of heartbreak—leaves us with nothing to do or say.

We turn off the TV and cry just a second for horror, but inevitably subside into helplessness. Everything in us surges and wishes for a half-moment, but we're not Mr. Obama. There is nothing to be done. A single black wave of emotion is all we can afford. A small token to a life cut short, but there it is. We're drained of emotion.

But do we move? Do we actually do something for Pete's sake and crying out loud?

No. We sit back on our heels and cry a second and then scroll down to the next thing. Baby shower, night on the town, reminiscence, old friends, photo, photo-with-cool-filter, lunch out, diamond ring, death in the family, #beautiful, global warming, the Hindenburg...all tangled and blurred into a newsfeed of life and love and pain and evanescent pleasure passes in front of our eyes in five-second soundbites. Witness our Facebook-trawling-Twitter-scrawling-Pinterest-stalling-YouTube-squalling generation as it tries with its Sesame Street attention span to comprehend worldwide devastation and the kind of grief that ends its own life.

Meaninglessness and the Artist’s Glory

I suppose it’s easy to believe in the Big Bang and evolution…when you’re sitting inside reading textbooks. But when you step outside, when you walk down paths surrounded by trees that flame in a thousand shades of orange, when you walk beside pools as still as solid glass that gleam with the fallen jewels, when you prick your finger on sculpted thorn, or try to understand the cheeps and splutters of an angry songbird, that’s when you realize God’s creative genius.

In Jesus lies the creativity of all peoples and all ages, the infinite supply of originality, wit, pleasure, purpose, genius, efficiency, and care. Every artist from Vivaldi to Van Gogh, from Michelangelo to Melville, claimed only a part of our Lord’s creativity, skill, and capacity for wonder. Only walk in a field of grass, with papery dried seed pods dangling and fluttering in the wind, and pick one plant, then one pod cluster, then one piece of the cluster, then open to reveal one tiny, dark, slender brown seed and see the intricacies of that tiniest of things, and remember that every pod, every piece, every cluster, every plant, every field on earth has a seed as beautiful as this one, and marvel.

It’s just like the movies: set designers create a scene with such depth of detail, such painstaking accuracy, that 99% of viewers will never notice half of what they see. Hundreds of hours of work, millions of dollars are poured into making every frame a rich, complete experience. And why? Is it because they enjoy sweating blood over details that will never be appreciated, or because they’re paid extra for attention to perfecting the invisible? The only explanation is love—love for the work, love for the purpose, love for the actors, love for the audience.   

Alone, Out of Love

We came here to have a really good time. Why, oh why does it always turn out like this?

I’m standing very close to the concert stage now, the bass is beating rhythmically through my body, the vocalist is making out with the microphone, and rainbow light effects dance overhead to the crushing applause of the crowd. It’s one of my first concerts, one of my favorite bands. Nissa and I have the same taste in music—bold, vibrant, cutting-edge—and you should have heard our squeals when we realized that we were actually going to see this group in concert.

Then Nissa said we had to take Brian along with us, and everything changed.

The hall erupts into piercing screams, the thudding of hundreds of pairs of feet, and I’m pummeled from every side by shrieking fans. But where are they? Where have they gone? I’m all alone by a concrete wall, all alone in a packed concert hall. Brian and Nissa are somewhere—but how on earth am I supposed to find them in this crush of bodies? Stubborn tears needle the corners of my eyes.

The way they were looking at each other in the car on the way over here. The way their hands were touching. It sent a shiver down my spine and I didn’t know why.

Betrayal

Please Don't Go, originally uploaded by Brandon Christopher Warren.

I'm not begging. Who's begging? I only asked. You never gave me a chance.

Wouldn't you like it if I just gave up. Wouldn't you laugh? I'll bet you would. You'd like to see me writhing on the ground under your cell phone camera, begging you not to do it, hoping you'd have mercy. 

      That's what you get for trusting someone.

And so you'll share those pictures. You'll mock what we had. You'll smile--showing all your pointy white teeth--and spit profanities with your friends. My future employer is going to see those photos, and maybe he won't be my employer after all. My mom might come across them. My next boyfriend...my children. All thanks to you.

I'm not begging, just asking. You'd love me to get on my knees and beg, to offer anything for the chance to smash that thing into 1,000 pieces. But you wouldn't give me the chance, would you? You're just too good for that. 

  

      That's what I get for trusting you.

Snow Walk: Stream-of-Consciousness

It’s a snowy glade. 

The sun dripping in streaks of white, or silver, or cream. And every dead branch is cloaked in a white sheath--whiteness clings and melts and crystallizes over everything. They look asleep under a blanket as if the snow were warming, providing protection from cold winter winds. 

Going up the hill it levels out onto small plateaus with spring pools, pools from springs sliding down the hill that ripple the snow into humps and hillocks. Snow is untouched save for the leaves that have fallen, broken sticks, and springs cutting through the snow to bubble up and sun warms snow. 

Glisten, 

sparkle, 

and little clumps of snow cling to smallest of trees.

Everything is silent save for the wind, sort of building pressure, jostling and rustling leaves. 

Slip and slide down hill, treading untrodden snow and as tree limbs go past, new glades form; you see places with tracks and no tracks. Ducking under snowy boughs and coming out on other side to a new opening all filled with sunlight, turning from silver to gold as clouds roll away. 

The snow makes a sound underfoot. Soft and powdery, makes a munching sound. Like a giant eating a bologna sandwich. Crunching, that’s the cliché. The annoying thing about clichés is that they’re so often right. It’s because they’re perfect, that’s why everyone uses them all the time. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re perfect. They’re clichés, they’re the best. 

Walking paths again, rubber boots sinking into the snow, very nice indeed. Dim shadows, wind kicking up gusts of snow that glide across the surface of the ground like spirits, swirling, effervescent spirits of light and shadow. Snow spirits, the ghost of snowflakes, icicle fairies, something snow obliterated. Kicking up mimics of snow spirits, 

oh! 

Plunging unexpectedly into drifts. Analyzing tracks on the ground, trying to pinpoint what on earth they are. The embalmed bodies of streams motionless in the snow--gray, sooty, broken. Snow is magical, but frost is what really transforms the world. Snow is nice too, though. Nice. Very nice. 

Lament of the Ghosts

On A Dark Trail, originally uploaded by bogenfreund.

Here you are in the center of our midst. How came you here? By wandering paths you treaded? Nothing will be left by morning. 


See cold specters overarching you? Can you hear that mournful scraping sound? Can your ears detect a solemn wail? Understand, that is the voice of regret...a voice that whispers in stillness and entreats the wind. Fluttering creatures rest on us and fall to untimely deaths. We have no patience, we have no pity. We have only sap that runs down our cheeks like tears. We stand here where memories of pain remain--soaking deep into the ground. We are rooted here where our own darkness did once reside. 


We are the ones who have made mistakes. We were the ones who trusted; we were the ones who tried and failed.You see one of us alone in an empty field? That one has no remorse. We broken ones gather here, all together, fearful of solitude. We bend beneath our sheltering arms, and tremble at the slightest breeze. We cling to one another.You see an evergreen--it pines away. And the willows weep. 


See our fallen sisters? They are lying prostrate on the ground, pale skin peeled away to reveal the bone. They are the lucky ones. To forget is a luxury denied to most. Oh! To be stuck by fire from heaven. Oh! To be felled by blades from below. To be turned to ash and disappear on the wind.... 'Tis a thought far too great for comprehension. We can only hope for that inevitable day when we finally crumble to be devoured by worms.


You stay here. You keep us solemn company. That is good--it will not be long now. Your own seed will fall and take root just like ours. Then you can huddle here, where memories of pain remain--soaking deep into the ground.