Unshadowed Land: II.The Visitor

They told me I would find myself out here. That it didn't make sense, but I would find out who I am. I didn't want to know who I am. But I went out anyway, out here in the wilderness.

I lost myself out here. I left everything I am down at the bottom of the mountains. My thoughts - to be like Christ, I can't be myself anymore. We should be ourselves only inasmuch as we approach the same God from our own beginnings. So I left behind all that made me me.

And I found what I want to be. I found God in the predictable places, I'm glad to say. He said he would be with me anywhere if I remained in him, and everywhere is where I looked. And it's where he was.

But I can only stay here so long. It's bright here. I can't keep my eyes open. There's too much to see. Too much light. The sun is closer here. Somehow it's never dark. It all seems the same. There aren't darker things--there aren't brighter things. Everything is simply pure. Everything in brought together in the shining-everything reflecting off of everything else-all reflecting the same light of the sun as if it were in everything.  And all there is is shining stone.  

But I can't live here. Not normally. I'd give anything to be able to. But I can't for much longer. My clothes look dark. My skin looks dark. My hands are black like night compared to this ever-flowing day.  My hands smudge everything.  There's something I'm covered in.

I'm not ready for this land yet. I don't know what it would look like for something like me to stay here, but surely I'm not meant to. Not now. I'm not ready. I'm too dark. I can't reflect like everything else. It's too much.

Tomorrow is December 8th.  I shall cross over the highest of the mountains tomorrow morning. I shall enter the great ring of peaks. Even if the lore is true, few have ever been here, and none still know what is inside. But I shall know. If I die to see. I can't imagine it being more beautiful than this land itself.

Binding

Our knots undone by our Lady's hands,
As our foundations wash like sand,
but Christ, by him no chains are rent,
he but takes from them their consequence.

Self-Medication with a Capital L

We kill our murderers, imprison thieves.
We pity the broken, suff'ring, bereaved.

And yet we cry "Redeeming Love!"
When with stolen bodies from broken trust
We forsake our lives in hope--
We take another's in tasty lust.

Mistakes

Spin upon the ground
A top I spin, a top.
I turn away, I turn away,
And back I spin again.

I cannot see the world around,
Stillness only in my hands,
All perception outside my person blurs.
All truth comes from distant lands,
from distant voices speaking deep
and soundless, like from a sleepless dream.

Spin upon the ground
A top I spin, a top,
I turn away, I turn away,
And topple, broken, down.

And anguish descends
and hope is gold
And freedom breaks
When love is sold.

But beauty every heart recounts with laying on of hands
For gracious, gentle fingers set me spinning once again.

And now my trouble is my passion for reality,
for rationalizing reasons and unbroken sensuality
for every top deserves its fall, to never rise again
but when another gave his all, all I don't comprehend

A flowering countenance entrancing and effortless
threatens to tread on despair and despondence,
threatens to hope where fears have claimed ground
threatens to break the chains which pain found
to gird and to witness to anxious convulsions,
to bear and to bind in a soul's self-repulsion,
to clear and to claim, to make slave to compulsion,
to taunt and to tease, to remind of expulsion.

For every top's time comes now once and again,
turning and falling like leaves in their time.
Burning and calling out words no one knows,
But those thoughts which compose their own meanings in rhyme.

So Raphael, break every burning which labels my
heart as still broken, binds my soul in it's stable;
Set my heart out to pasture, to graze and to grow
and to water the seed which the sower's hands sow.

Send me a sign of one who is greater
purer and stronger and mover and shaper
of everything I see before me - and me
-a sign that Love breaks over levys and dams
which I set in its place. Not that I don't think he can,
But that I don't deserve to count in the plan.

O, heart, O, heart,
why be downcast within,
set spinning, set spinning,
We have yet to begin
Our work is still growing,
still reaping, now hoeing
now can we start rowing
through rivers unshowing
of frozen night's thawing
and creatures all crawling
round nature's great altar
of stone, broken halter
is fallen beyond me
in shreds, it no longer
can slow freedom's turning
now turning, now turning
now remembering times of great things forgotten,
glazed over by small things made large in their rotten
composures and all the foul stench of putrescence
Which I wish wasn't part of my long adolescence.

So now when tops fall, they are picked up, replaced
(if they have the courage confessing) .
And all momentum provided, all lost motion regained
the tops find their motion through the urging of pain.
If they can accept that tops don't all have to stay toppled.
If they can lay claim to that great grace, be hoppled,
and give up all need to understand love,
if they can receive without thinking of
the things they are leaving,
they, unfettered, are cleaving to new chances.
And the promise of future dances.
And that two-legged horse which now prances,
free from his four-legged woes.

Spin upon the ground,
A top, my soul, a top
I turned away, I turned away,
And back I'm spun again.