Thursday, July 05, 2012

And if your right hand subverts you, cut it off, cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members be lost, and not that your whole body fall into Gehenna.

I have tried to write something here three times in the last week or so, but each time what oozes out of my mind onto the keyboard ends up being horrible blasphemy. I tried to put a positive spin on a few efforts after I realized this, but then, is it really possible to put a positive spin on blasphemy?
"The things that come out of a man are what make him unclean" - and I've felt that uncleanness when I read my own words, like a black biofilm creeping swiftly over my skin.  So I haven't posted them, since I'd prefer to remain in quarantine until I'm clean; as it is written: "He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp."

And why is this?  I think (I think, I don't know) that it's because I speculate in an effort to understand. Perhaps some abysses are not open for speculation, as Nietzsche said, unless you don't mind the abyss speculating inside of you.

But the abyss has opened a hole in my living room, and I must walk around it every day.

So if I cannot speculate as to why it is there or why there are such things without being sucked into it myself, I suppose I can just walk through the kitchen to get from one side of the room to the other without resorting to walking past IT.

But the abyss is there when I open my bible, and when I get on my knees.  How can I avoid these?

I call to God, to my God, but I cannot exercise my mind towards Him, without it exercising swiftly against Him, pointing out exhibit A, exhibit B, calling me to the stand as a material witness against Him so that it can proceed quickly on to the concluding argument which I can't bear.

I look up to the judge to be excused, and who is the Judge?

So I choose to be silent, in contempt of court,
and am dragged off to remain in custody.

If the Judge is dragged off, then who will give me justice? Who will restore what has been stolen?
If the Maker were cast off into outer darkness, then from His destruction all would unravel, and every good and beautiful thing along with Him - including those things which He is accused of having used amiss, and then what of the lawsuit? The court would be dissolved, the aggrieved would have no loss, as they would never have possessed, neither would they have existed themselves.

I look to the right, a lion
I look to the left, a bear.

Yet I cannot be a sluggard, and remain in bed.
I refuse to say He's a hard man, reaping where He hasn't sowed,
and so I won't bury the talent in a handkerchief.
So I am left as always with only one option:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him"
And knowing that I am not noble or brave for this
but desperate, and damaged, and wrong.




1 comment:

exeter said...

Yes. I can only speak for myself, you know my thoughts on this and how what has occurred is not any part of my thoughts, trust, hopes and expectations but in the end who else Do we have in this world but him?
I was reading your paper on Macrina, and how the earlier church addressed, or sought to address death. The one thing that stood out to me, was where Gregory espouses with his mouth and will the words of his sister and at the same time throws his body on his body beside the tomb in grief.

We can with our wills espouse what is right but I believe God expects no less from us than our grief-stricken weeping, moaning, questioning. It is hard and I'm sure for you and for Brandy a thousand fold more so.

God keep and comfort you.