Wrecked

Now and then I become wrecked all over again.  Sometimes it's a news headline.  Sometimes it's a memory.  Sometimes a conversation.  Sometimes a photo stumbled upon which makes the world stand still.  Today it's all of that, compiled and combined.  I'm collecting it all right up under my grieving nose.  Bringing it into a heap.  An ugly heap.  So I can get a good look at it.  

And my heart is being ripped to shreds all over again.  

With the strength of a great bird's talons
Or the persistent claws of a wild cat

And it turns out I can't actually bear it at all. 


Now and then the longing swells back up inside of me, telling me that I'm in the wrong place and that I need to go.  Go.  Lay myself in the dirt of that place, ANY place, and let it be my place.  Let the foreign words pass back and forth and settle into my mind, my heart, my soul.  Let the smells become part of me.  The sounds, smells, tastes, smother me in their new, fresh strangeness until they are my mine, until they are me. 

And my heart is being ripped to shreds all over again.
And I can't bear it. 


Now and then I'm faced with my smallness.  My utter uselessness.  My pointless existence.  Listen to me, I have something to say.  But it turns out all of my ideas have been spun out by better minds.  Ironed flat and given a bow.  Someone else is doing it all.  And I'm here with my longing, my ugly heap, my churned up insides, my green grass and fridge full of food...and I think I'll just be sick.  

And my heart is being shredded in this beautiful place.  Bits flying about.  Will it mend?
I don't know but I'm sure I can't bear it.

Groaning

All the pain
I'm trying to hold it
But everything is so broken 
The pieces keep slipping through the cracks in my fingers.

They fall and shatter
more fragments
more broken bits
because I dropped them
they slipped.

The pain of my people, my streets, my world
And all of my own small bit of pain
All the broken pieces filling up my hands, my head
They're sharp little pieces
Hard to hold

And I can't see anymore.
Where was I going?

"You're a good, good God", we sing.
I slink down in my pew.  
I can't make the words make sense. 
But I need them to be true 
But the pain is too heavy.  
I'm pinned under it.  
And I want to stay here 
Because the freedom I preach of is eluding me.  
I can't see it.
I don't feel it.  
It's not mine.

Hey, God.  Have you seen this place? It's a trumped up mess.
God on your thrown.
I'd like to point that scepter at a thing or two.
Pick up that mighty lightning bolt and take aim.  

Example?  Just one... Aleppo.
I can't even look anymore at Aleppo.
Is that wrong?  
I can't watch them cower, get blown up.  
Starve.  
I can't look.  I'm covering my eyes. Shielding my heart. 
But how dare I?  
My God, 
ALEPPO.

Millions of shards.  Poking me, cutting me.  Sharp cuts festering into wounds and deep aches and impossible weight.  
I groan under the weight of it. 
And I can't get up.  
I can't look.
I can't.
   

"For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."  2 Corinthians 5:4