nathanael.ink

We are all scrambling. It is all within the crags of emotion that we wrestle to circumnavigate both too-much-death, and too-much-hope.We cannot look upon it grinning, smugly wishing we too could go. We cannot grieve too richly, availing only a deep moan over soulless caskets. The more I cry out, the more I wonder why it is I am crying. Where they go, so also we all will go.

We have amputees retaining souls. We have brains lesser and greater in size and scale and lobes and wrinkles, and all retain souls. I have yet to point at any place and confidently say “there am I!” Thusly, I resolve that a man can leave a body, since, having removed each part individually, the soul never goes with any one bodily member. Consciousness distinguishes itself apart from all material things. So it is that I persist: where they go, soon also we all will go. In so much as to say, we will all be leaving here, and leaving with everyone else small or large percentages of body-mass to be grotesque residual material…

I don’t think I can bare being so near it again- wearing responsibility like a hefty double-yoke we heave-hoe along the grungy roads. Some Ox and I carry the weight of it. It might not be all mine, but I ought to pull equal shares with Ox toward the end(whatever end there may be.) Unfortunately Ox is time/space, and I add to him only the burden of my own dead weight. I cannot pull with him, instead he just pulls me ever along… sometimes I am limp, sometimes kicking, sometimes screaming, but for damn sure I am also beating my chest and my head in regret of my un-aiding laziness.

…there is not but wishings left; wish him rest, wish him heaven, wish him peace and quiet and some serene walk down an avenue of Grace, wish that when I lie down
someone will wish me the same. We package sentiments we wish we would be able to hear from the dirt. We hope in the long hours after we go, that they will cry as we have cried. It’s like we are so utterly petrified of the unknown that we make it up as we go. Not simply that we do not know where our friend’s soul goes, but that we in no way will ever know how the earth responded to our own going. If everyone grieves, we can quench up ourselves to know everyone will grieve for me too- that is the scrap solace we fashion in our heavy breathing. Truly truly, I say to you, there is no such solace in it.

Lo, if there be a Home ahead of us, then the loss we face is that of friends moving away. Which can be a great loss indeed. One we scarcely know at all. For it would now be a moving away, losing phone numbers, and reverse engineering of Facebook so as to un-know everyone’s day. Imagine carriages and self-sustaining farmers in small districts -once you leave, it’s more unlikely than likely that their shimmering face will again be in your gaze.

Nonetheless, Home or not, the soul’s place is unknowably lost to us, thus hope in a Home is no foundation for much of anything -though perhaps enough a foundation for unusual, cunningly selfish, creatures like Grief. Instead good foundations ought to be laid in the concrete. If it can be swallowed, that some Home exists, and those at the door are generous, then one might alleviate the pain immediate. However, if we are under the impression that Faith be as trustworthy as our memory of yesterday, then we know only that Love exists with all authority. Love exists. Love who created justice, that He might subject Himself to it in our place. Love that instituted all things, has also the free agency to circumnavigate all conceivable limitations…
There is little more than the hem of anything to be clutching onto… so I curl my fingers into the hem of Love’s clothes
and beg both to understand, and to leave someday soon to be utterly with Him too…

“For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart…how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus… Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. For I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake…”- Philippians 1:7-21