Enough

OK.  Enough is enough.  Something has got to change.  Something in me.  Something in the world.  Something surrounding the world I see.

I don't have it figured out.  I don't know what it is.  I don't know how to start.  But God you won't let me stop thinking about it.

There is something missing.  It can't be filled by any made up group.  It crosses any category I place it in.  It scares me to death and yet it's totally necessary.

Take me out of myself.  I can't sort it out any more than Isaiah could describe what he saw, but You look at me with those piercing eyes and I scream, "Here I am, send me!"  Ruin my life, my self conception, my image of my self.  Only take me where I should go.

Kill what inhibits You in me.  For all my sins and flaws and insecurities, I still want to go. The metanoia is approaching.  When I have turned, fire me off in the direction I should go.

I have the skills to fill the void.  I will speak for them, give them a place and an identity.  Give me your eyes and burn up my pretense.  Help me to live true and open.  Help me to free the beast.  Send me to those who need me and bring alongside those I need, those you've prepared for this work.

There are lost ones all out there.  I have caught the scent of the ones I am to find.  I'm straining at the leash.  Let me loose and I will fly straight into the jaws of hell to bring them back.

Beast

This is likely going to be a dangerous post.  We'll see if it even gets published.  It might end up deleted.

Sometimes I feel an urge rise in me to tear things up.  To jump up and rip my way free from the invisible chains, the padded cell of office, house.  I know it probably wouldn't last long once the pain from that endeavor started to set in...it's harder to seriously break stuff than it seems.  But the urge is there.

I've never acted on it and my reasons quickly stills the beast and switches my attention elsewhere.  But sometimes I wonder what would happen.  How would life be different.

I've seen the beast flare to the surface on occasion.  When someone turned against the traffic light and I had to jump back from being hit, close enough to hit his window, which I slapped with all the force I could get in a split second reaction, and then he had the gall to stop and yell at me!  I was charging him down.  Even in business attire and with coworkers.  They pulled me away.

Another time someone punched through my apartment window.  When I ran out to see what happened I saw who I thought was a drunk boyfriend retaliating for our making his girlfriend pay for our car window which she had broken, I charged him down with true murder in my mind.  I was going to throw him off the balcony.  Fortunately there, my neighbor came out at the same moment and saw my intent.  He was closer and beat me to him.  He pulled his delirious and bleeding friend into a full nelson and positioned himself between me and him yelling that he was drunk and didn't mean to do it.  That quickly calmed and resolved as well.

But these were provoked reactions that I bet many men would have.  What I don't know about are the swells in the midst of other activities.  No doubt, my wildness trying to get out.  Pulling at the chain, shaking the bars.  Do others feel this?

I know I need wildness.  I need my time of pain and wearing down in the woods.  It is the physical expression of my spiritual discipline.  It keeps me sane.  But ow normal is this?  How do I give voice to it in healthy ways?  Will there be a time when it has a rightful place...my moment on Perelandra where I learn what this is truly for?  do all men feel it?  Is our mask of civility so thin?  Are we lying to ourselves and others when we pretend to not have these aspects?  Or do I contain a wild beast in the iron bars of my will and reason?

Behind

We often react to situations based on our emotion or perception.  Is it possible to step back and withhold reaction until we know more?  Can we take the time to step inside someone's head and see what motivates them?  Perhaps it would enlighten us greatly.  Perhaps we wouldn't be so quick to take offence or to come to our own defence.

Maybe we would see what makes another person take the shape and tone they do.  Maybe then we could regulate our reaction to be appropriate.  If we could see inside people we could perhaps bypass the outward and seemingly magically speak to the real issues.

Today I watched this happen.  I saw someone melt down over a very frustrating issue.  We had both been tense over these things beyond our control, but not with each other.  I had been reacting in my usual way...perhaps a little more loosely since I consider this person a friend.  But in this moment, the frustration turned on me.  I was not sure where it was coming from but I could see several things.  My friend's facial muscles were giving away the depth of his emotion as he tried to assert control over me.  I realized it as an attempt to grab control over something in a situation that had overwhelmed him.

I thought of reacting in defence, but forestalled it miraculously.  Instead we retreated to a private place and talked.  Apparently, he had been taking my verbal expression of frustration as personal attack.  This surprised me since it had never even crossed my mind that these things were his fault.  I had never even directed comments at him.  in fact they had all been calm and rational comments to the effect of, "I wish we had a different way to do this.  I hate being locked into a single path and dependent on ___ conditions."

So again, I could react with anger, point out his wrongs, or I could dissuade his frustration.  To my surprise I found myself doing the latter.  He calmed and we worked it out.  He even seeing that he had taken things too personally.

But then I began thinking of how he had arrived at that moment in the first place.  I tried to further understand his perspective, using the facts I knew.  Gradually a picture is forming.  I'm beginning to see how to communicate with him.  How to shape my flow to his in an edifying way.  To come alongside and build up as we move forward.

But this requires that I step outside myself and find the truth behind this facade.  In how many other ways can I do this?  What will be the effect?  Can I become as collected and cool as Card's Speaker for the Dead?  Knowing how to speak truth into any situation and gently manipulate myself for the betterment of the people I interact with?  To shape people and situations by reshaping myself?

I think this is possible.  In yielding there is strength.  In gentleness there is power.  It's not the same as slimy kowtowing or political manipulation.  It's a fresh wind, a folding brook.  It's the essence of the Spirit Lord.