I downloaded Maria Taylor’s “Time Lapse Lifeline” today from eMusic … not my normal style of music, but the lyrics pulled me in, and by the third turn my eyes were wet, staring at a photo of my family. “Oh, we dreamed of life; it was just like that, just like that … and just like that it’s done.” I realized that I’m angry, but not so much at any particular person or group of people that I might have thought … not the well-meaning but often misguided church, not the people who see the specks (and logs) in my eyes but miss the logs in their own, not the culture of manipulation and control that seems at times to be systemic around me. What I'm really angry at is death … not just for myself, but for my family … for my brother, my dad, my mom … all already gone, and in short time my wife, my daughter, my son … and eventually whatever grandchildren I may one day have… I try to peer into the future and see their children, and theirs, and theirs, all of whom will succumb to death. … Then I step back and look up at my vast family tree, all of my forbears stretching back through centuries of time, all fallen in death, all taken after such short lives … some in the strength of youth like my brother, some wrinkled and weak in their final years, but all of them holding a lifetime of dreams, loves, memories, beauty … all these quenched by death. Damn death!
I look at their faces and feel a resolve that I’ve not felt before… Surely to be human is to be able to choose sides, to fight the enemy of love, hope, and beauty. Yes, I want to side against death. Here is a new motivation for faith that may be stronger than any other I’ve considered … far stronger than any fickle rational basis for belief, stronger even than my yearning for love and beauty to have a significance that transcends the moments in which I experience them. If the man Jesus really was sent into the human family to lead a rebellion against the tyrant Death, then perhaps I should reconsider the call to join him in this resistance movement. Assuming, of course, that the call is still there for me. (Many of you know I was once a christian believer but have been agnostic for several years now; forgive me for wearing my spiritual ruminations so visibly on my sleeve here ... I really don't mean to make anyone uncomfortable--I just figure someone else might be able to relate).
I was challenged yesterday by a story I heard on NPR about the women’s movement in
....
Liberia....
that earlier this decade forced an end to the mad war which had engulfed that country, destroying its families, ravaging its innocence. Thousands of women clothed in white, seated in a field each day as President Taylor drove by … they did not stop their peaceful protest until he had been shamed into defeat; at one point they were willing to strip themselves by the thousands and bare their own shame before the world if the men would not carry through with the peace talks. That is a resolve borne of desperation when faced with great evil. I feel something similar as I stare down my own enemy and the enemy of the entire human family, Death. The question for me then becomes, "With whom shall I ally in this stand against the ultimate enemy?" Feel free to pass on your own thoughts ... regardless your persuasion.
1:59 AM
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