Book Segement #6

September 5, 2005
Fissures

Another splinter of time. The sting of loneliness imbedded. Opening this journal today it feels like the isolation is cracking through its worn leather. Then, the warm syrup of Your light seeps through the fissures; the pain lifts, the tears dry, a hesitant smile spills over the chipped curb of my lips. The empty saucer of this minute fills. \

September 8, 2005

Why does it feel as though the more I seek Your face, the louder I cry out for You to save me from my enemies; the demons that lurk like hungry red dogs gnawing at the blood-smeared meat of denial. The more I surrender, gutted before You, I feel even more desperate, isolated, frightened. Is this when You are actually closest to me? Is this what this faith thing is about? Are you speaking to me? Now? Holding me? Now? Loving me? Now? Does real faith mean abandoning all control? Are You closer to me right now, than ever before? Is my suffering my blessing?

I am raw.

I turn and notice the breeze moving through the leaves outside my sliding glass door.

The tiniest glimmer seemed to flicker in Valerie’s eyes during the last five minutes of our recent session with Jim. For a moment. A tender hint?

When I arrived home later that day, I surrendered to Bentley’s warm, mop-tongue kisses. We rolled together on the floor playing, tugging and laughing. Then I surrendered into the silent arms of sleep.

It hurts. Now. The serrated fangs rip efficiently through the flesh of dreams. Now. The blood dries, a scab on the darkness.

It will be better. You are here. There is faint light pulsing at the end of the hallway. Amen.

September 11, 2005

Somewhere in between

Henri Nouwen writes in Reaching Out that you cannot know God’s true love through “the prayer of the heart” without fully experiencing the dichotomy between extreme pain and extreme joy. Jesus’ praying experience in Tabor (light) versus Gethsemane (darkness). The palm leaves versus the crown of thorns. The cup of wine versus the blood of the cross. Somewhere in between the extremes is where faith and the meaning of His heart will be found. “And as we move back and forth in between the extremes, we momentarily cross the center, where the storm clears, the voices pause, the wound closes, and the prayer of the heart is murmured.”

I wonder if this is what it will feel like when I see Your face, falling to my knees to anoint Your feet with my tears.

September 17, 2005

Just about 60 days of separation….and counting

I was walking the dogs tonight around 5:45 PM, the first real cool breath of autumn in the air, Tennessee’s skies rivulets of cobalt acrylic. For some reason a feeling washed over me like a smile. I leaned back, arms spread wide like when I used to lure Victoria from a low hanging tree branch, to jump…fly with laughter into the safety of my arms. “Daddy, I love you so much. You are amazing and magical.”

Yes, you are, Father.

A passage that caught me when leaping from a higher branch this week:

Shipwrecked
"The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from fantasy and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find himself to be on firm ground.

Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic ruthless glance, absolutely sincere because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality."

Jose Ortega