the road to breaking
the road out of Eden is such a long long road….
…….and any attempt to return is longer still.
At first it is imperceptible, the decent so gradual. And then it is sudden. It is the way of all people, empires, and nations. And my how the mighty have fallen.
I saw you standing there. The observer becoming the observed, a shadow body generating its own shadow with nothing casting it. And in the darkness and shadows things get lost that never should be found. And things get found that should have stayed lost. I felt like I was standing on the back side of the moon. As I stood there watching, you were joined by others and then exact duplicates appeared by your sides, Identical in every detail. Hair, clothes, expression. I was made to know the one and only uniqueness. Each of you had his own mind and thus his own will and thoughts. Then each tantamount disappeared and you were left standing alone. But life was never meant to be a solo journey. Perhaps we are being enabled much differently than we originally thought, a generous admission when an EEG detects no electrical activity in the brain, standing dead appearing living. And maybe eternity is breaking into time and some solitary souls are turned and begin the arduous journey back again. It simply means most won’t and will be left behind, just a shadow in someone else’s mirror.
Thousands of years and scores of generations punctuate our exodus from our genesis, now a comatose traveler in a catatonic state obsessed with the trivial, temporal and the comedy of the absurd. You call it the pursuit of the American Dream, making ends meet, and keeping food on the table. Your cat and your crib dominating your emotion and devotion. If you attend an assembly of the saints, Little Hope Baptist Church or any moniker of miracles of your choice, don’t position your posterior on the palliating phew before you get your triple shot vanilla latte listening to testimonials of God winks from the local fleeced flock. Maybe we get what we want. Maybe we get what we need. But God help us if we ever get what we deserve.
Some say it’s about the journey not the destination, others the antithesis. Is it the companionship of man that we seek, kinship and approval, our downward slide yet incomplete? Could it possibly be that we have erred all along seeking the famil-liar and not the divine? Is our path defined by the ever changing tide of contours, culture and allure, our foot print here today, gone by the morn?. Oh mortal man stop walking on sand! Stop turning pages of a story in a book you never really wanted to read, now a delinquent deposit in your trashcan.
By the dark of the moon I tarried, elongated shadows filling my field of view tracing silhouettes on the ground, the sanctuary of silence my only companion. I prepared for failure. It was the easiest thing to do. Everything and everyone with the exception of only a few, succumbing to the weight of corruption and lies, trusting what is wicked to do what is right. Seduced by light we find ourselves entrapped by darkness. But the shadows aren’t right. Images disappear. Streams of understanding go silent, cloaking determining what we see and don’t see. Are we merely pilgrims passing through this waste land of lost souls who having ears to hear but hear not, and having eyes to see but see not? Or maybe just maybe we find ourselves on the road that leads us back…….back to our origins and back to Eden, in a place far away from silvery tears and unmarked graves. And in a soft light, the morning mist lifts to reveal what exists; forest green, a waking dream, and sculptures of water and ice.
The hollow hills whisper secrets in the wind, the sound of sunlight touching my skin. Then a great storm arose and with it a quaking. Trembling I stood, so as to give a reckoning. And then a still small voice spoke. ‘Beware when the truth becomes ugly, and a lie is exalted as beautiful. Beware when the enemy sits as god in the temple of God extoling his beauty and strength. For are you not God’s temple. Let the fallen rally around Baal’s fires. Let it warm them. But know it will also assuredly consume them. Purification through immolation. For you are the enemy, and the lion is loosed. He comes to devour. Either you fall on the rock and are broken, or the rock will fall on you and your name will not be remembered or spoken..
We watch as children suffer while most pretend not to see. Are not cries for Tammuz lifted into night skies. Does not sorrow steal as breath. Is not truth written in tears. But I hear singing in hushed tones as soft as worn linen, quiet as a shroud lifted to the clouds. Solitude weaves strands of thread, a sweet requiem in my head, silence carrying secrets upon my bedstead.
Seeking my destination I arrived to a high mountain, rocky and barren. The clouds lifted and there appeared a deep chasm spanning a great gulf that separated me from my object of desire. I was encumbered with a great burden which I carried on my back. Searching for some way across this impassible gulf and realizing the utter futility of my efforts I came to the cross. I was compelled to lay my burdens down as I knelt at its foot. But every time I arose my burden’s were on my back again. After several attempts this time I remained, stripped of all I carried. This time I left it before the cross. Then behind me a great light appeared blazing as the sun and cast a reflection from the cross across the chasm revealing a path to the other side and my journey’s end. And I realized that sometimes you have to climb the highest and loneliest places to finally find your way back home. As I took a deep breath and inhaled the mountains finest, I experienced the sublime inexpressible feeling of something I had never fully known before……Justification. The gravity of memory still persisted. The past hadn’t vanished. The scars remained. But now, I stopped hiding from them……all of them.