I’ve been trying to decide how to tell you this… I’m not happy with the way I keep trying to say it. I need to hear the story again. God help me write what is true.
These last fifteen years, began as all years began, with a creative explosion of Love. The ‘big bang’ of my own soul. Without casting blame in any direction, I can simply list my feelings and thoughts at the age of eighteen. My life was empty. I had followed the truth as best as I could with what I was given. I left the Catholic faith behind as superstition and became a convicted atheist. I dropped out of high school in search of some sense of belonging in the world. It’s not a 9-to-5, I know that much. There is no greater meaning to life than pleasure. There is no greater pleasure than sexual pleasure. That is all the love there is to be had. I have no trade, I have no power, I have no money, I have no friends. I am not particularly attractive, and I have terrible people skills. I am distant from everyone, even my closest family members. I am incapable of being known or loved beyond a very superficial level of connection. I accept the fault myself for that but I see no solution. My efforts at communication are incredibly strained and often seem ineffective. I am giving up. I tried. I really tried. I thought that if I pursued these certain people that they would finally be the ones to love me. They could take my loneliness away. But I can’t get out of this body; I don’t know how to let them see me; I am forever trapped behind this deceitful face. I am to them everything I am not to myself and I simply cannot bear it anymore. I hate how I see myself through their eyes. I want to kill that ugliness they see. Suicide is a reasonable solution. It can be easy, quick. I just need to fall far enough. And I have a plan. Now I am free. This is my way out. It feels good. I am empty and void of all the pain I used to bear. I don’t have to live that way anymore. It’s up to me. This is my choice, my right. I stood at the precipice. And to this precipice He came. On the brink of death, I remembered God. Just the idea. I had forgotten for many years that people even believed in such a thing. Why am I remembering now? Because its a hole in this plan, and it’s not resolved. Because I am realizing at this very moment that I never actually knew. I never actually had any proof. I rejected God because it contradicted my own will, not because I had proof. The proof was behind the fall, beyond this next step. I am only now understanding what the word actually signifies. I had been thinking of God in the wrong way; like a parent that I didn’t want to listen to. But that’s not it. Its more like the very essence of life itself, the energy that makes this meditation even possible. The very spark of consciousness allowing me to see myself. What is that? How is this? Who sees me? Who am I? Who is the I? I really don’t know. I am having serious doubts about my atheism now. There is way too much mystery here. How did I ever think this was conclusive; I simply hadn’t really thought deeply about it. God is a bigger idea than my own understanding of myself. If I can’t even understand the mystery of myself, how can I go about making presumptions about creators of universes? It’s a bad joke. I have no ground to stand on here. Atheism makes a claim that is way out of my depth. So, what can I say? I’ve been so hurt by people not seeing me, but why was I hurt? It could only be by comparison to a better me. I saw that me. I knew that me. I loved that me. Where did that me come from? If it was an illusion, I wouldn’t feel so betrayed. Only truth can be betrayed. The truth in me is what God means. It’s okay to believe in that. It’s totally reasonable. So now I’m stuck again. But wait. God? I prayed… What followed I can only name as grace. God answered me. Not with words. With a moment of light and song. A moment of complete ecstasy in the knowledge and the beauty of who I am in the eyes of a Holy Trinity (as yet unnamed). Not me loving myself. Not me loving myself. I knew it wasn’t me. I couldn’t just love me like this. But with every nerve in my body I felt the love for Him who loved me first. Gratitude of a magnitude greater than the sum of all my sufferings or any imaginable future suffering. Love like home, a moment in a forever of perfection. I had never cried tears of joy before. I had never felt so finished and uninhibited. Nothing else mattered except this Love that was God. My loyalty was always there with Him, I just hadn’t set it free. I wanted His love so bad, but I had been afraid. Fear created the false positive of atheism. Once exposed, I was easy for Him to win. I didn’t want to die anymore. Not yet. We could be together now that I was out of His way. The barrier of my own pride and self-centeredness had been removed. It committed suicide. The death of my presumption was all the invitation He needed to enter. Now he spoils me with His beautiful intimacy, a dance of resurrection gathering all history in its motion. It was an introduction, a marriage, and a birth in the same breath. I had had nothing left. Thus, he filled my empty vessel completely. He got all of me in return to pour out into the world. There was literally no part of my life, not a single thought, that I did not turn over to His scrutiny. His judgment was all I cared about, all the time. Truly lovers, truly wedded. One life, one spirit, one movement. There was no undoing what had been done. Even death could not do us part. Amen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorCole Anson Viscichini Archives
September 2018
Categories |