Knocked "Right" Out

Have you been crushed?  Have you had that moment when the "truth" was crushed out of you?  Maybe I should rephrase.  Has life hit you hard enough and long enough to knock the "right" right out of you?  There is something beautiful about people who have been so broken they no longer feel the need to be right.  Maybe it's their eyes wrinkled by pain not age?   Maybe it's their presence seasoned by countless midnights alone, without hope, cursing the night to sleep.  Maybe it's their well-worn honesty that can't help but admit "I got little figured out and a lot to learn."  There's a peace around such people; an ease, a space that let's you breathe.  Some of us have been holding our breath for ages. It ain't easy breathing with all these masks on.

Enough Already

It only took about 20 hours for God to stick it to me in 2013.  I mean honestly can't I have at least a day of delusion and self deception?  Can't I have at least a day to think I got it all together?  Am I the only one who finds themselves saying to God, "Enough already!"  I'm one flawed cat and I keep discovering how flawed I really am, but every now and then I could use a What about Bob "vacation from my problems."  You ever relish those guilt free years?  Or what about those past victories like "I didn't drink today" or "I wasn't such an a#%hole today."  Now I'm crushed by so little: A harsh word, a judgmental thought, an unsympathetic heart.  Shakespeare placed on the lips of Julius Caesar the words "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."  As grand and heroic as Shakespeare's words sound, they fall short of the life devoted to following Jesus.  To follow Jesus turns Shakespeare's quote on its head:  "Cowards never die before their death; the valiant many times before."  Sometimes I just wanna be a coward.  

Newtown

On Friday one of my co-workers came to my office door with tears in her eyes, "They think twenty kids have been killed at an elementary school in Connecticut."  The shock, the horror, the pit-of-my-stomach sorrow.  Eleven days till Christmas.  How many presents bought will remain unopened?  How many hands poised to rip through wrapping were raised in terror?  Lowered, now they rest.  We can't endure such things.  Our minds shards of broken glass.  They thrash, lurch, flail for meaning.  We find a voice rooted beyond our recognition crying out in primordial pain, "What the hell was wrong with that guy?  Why God why?  Why didn't you do something!?"  What we feel is beyond emotion and expression.  Only the yell that shreds our vocal cords or the groan that shatters our heart can approximate.  We have to do something.  We gotta make sense.  Some how...some way - anger, blame, apathy, excuse.  We've gotta push out, away from ourselves. We can't look in.  We dare not look in.  "In" there lurks something in the shadows - insidious, heinous, beastly.  It's too close, too near.  We must deflect.  We must resist, repel, reject.

"Stay back!  'In' your too damn close.  I'm not going to say it again."
It's too late; it's always been too late.

"In" speaks, "You know you're no different.  You're desperately lonely and scared.  You're angry, envious, and apathetic.  You foment lies, embrace deceit, and celebrate violence.  Your heart turns cold, your soul runs dry, and your morality rings false.  You too are human."

The events at Newtown leave me overwrought with emotion and the awareness that "In" my heart are not only the seeds of anguished empathy but the seeds of all that went wrong that tragic day.  Father forgive us for we know and know not what we do.