beyond the margins
in the silient white spaces,
in the yet uncreated places
are the best ideas
floating blissfully unaware
that life will be thrust upon them
with all of its horrible need

Three times i cried out
In joy, in joy, in joy

My Matthew
My Caleb
My Isabella

Echoes of my heart
Sprang forth to the world
And i hear them beating
In synchronicity –

he and he and she
Wherever I happen to be
This triumvirate, this trinity
Are the better parts of me

 

 

 

beauty presses hands up
beneath the fish
palms to belly
like hercules on
some unwritten
maritime labour
and she is smiling
at the ease of it all

I don’t remember how old I was when I first contemplated suicide. I think I was in my early teens during a time of endless sexual abuse by trusted adults and bullying by classmates.

It seems natural that anyone in that circumstance would consider ending their life. With anxiety levels immeasurably high there was many a time when I sat hidden somewhere – in my room, or in my hiding place in the woods a few kilometers from my house – when I would dream about the solace of ending myself.

The idea of all the external pressures ending seemed so attarctive. No more abuse. No more bullying. No worries about mum and poverty and how she would end up being able to care for herself. No worries about school, about succeeding. Everything done.

Often I thought about hanging myself.

I have never attempted suicide. Fear was a large factor against that. As I grew older and formed a tight circle of loved ones including my children fear was replaced by concern. Concern for those left behind. Concerned for how it would impact them.

Still concern was not enough to stop me from thinking about it. I will be 52 years old in less than two weeks and I can honestly say that as recently as today the idea, the consideration of suicide, continues to rear its head.

In the face of stress and anxiety and uncertainty I still drift to that dark place. I do not think a year or even a month in my life has gone by when the thought of suicide and how I would do it has not gone by. This seems sad to me but in reality I often do not feel anything.

Even as I type this I know I have flipped that switch I learned flip when I was six years old and had just been beaten up by a peer surrounded by other children. That switch that turned off the emotions so it would not hurt so much. That switch that left me sitting outside of myself looking in, knowing what I should be feeling but blissfully incapable of feeling it. Adrift in a numb, cold place protected from hurt. It is like becoming an emotional leper…no longer feeling the pain of emotion but still taking the damage.

The switch flips by itself now. I no longer consciously have to do it. It just happens and I become an emotionaless man mimicking the emotions people expect you to have in certain circumstances.

There have been many times I have been thankful I do not own a gun. It would be so easy.

But there is always pain. Pain of those left behind. Pain of all that would be lost and missed. Pain, worry and regret.

What this regular contemplation has done is to make me unafraid of death. Don’t misunderstand – in my default mode I desire to live forever. That mode which is that rare moment when I am the uncorrupted version of me, the me that was always supposed to be before those thieves of innocence came and stole my most precious attributes a little at a time like vampires slowly bleeding a victim so as to make them last as long as possible.

I dislike writing these things. They are so deeply personal. So not the image of the put-together man I try to present. I want the world to see me as strong, compassionate, loving, a good father and husband, a great employee and worker, a creative writer. I want to present only these things to the world but ultimately this image is not truthful because it lacks the truth of the darker more desparate parts of me. Like the part that wants to kill himself from time to time.

A continuity throughout my life has been the need to be liked. In the midst of that need comes the deep hatred of having hurt other people. I think the two are intertwined somehow. Even the smallest hint that someone might be upset with me sends me into great paroxysms of anxiety. This makes me incredibly easy to manipulate. I am telling you my secrets and this is both freeing and frightening.

I want only for the people around me, the people connected to me, to be happy. I want to play a role in bringing that happiness. I hate the thought that I have played a role in causing others pain (and I have).

In moments of emotional crisis I become immobilized. I want to do whatever the person or people around me want me to do and so I freeze for fear of causing more pain…and this inaction almost always creates more hurt. It is a terrible vicious cycle.

Ironically I almost live for external moments of crisis and chaos. In those moments my switch flips and I go into helper mode capable of navigating external horror and later feeling good about myself.

All of these things make me incredibly difficult to know. I am very hard to enter into relationship with and even harder to sustain. I am a man with many aquaintences but few friends. A man who has been rightfully accused of receiving other people’s pain but never willing to open up and share his own.

This is true.

I can write these things down because I am at my most vulnerable, intimate and truthful when I write. The act of writing is cathartic for me. It almost as if the black of the pixels that make up these letters is a small amount of the black that lives within me that I am able to bleed out into these words. The more black out the less black in.

There are times I wonder at who I would have been if not for the landmines that have exploded around me throughout my life. I know it is a futile exercise but I do it anyhow.

Who would I be if I had grown up in a stable family with a father? What if I had not been sexually abused for all of those years? Who would I have become? A better version of who I am perhaps. Someone more capable of sustaining healthy normal relationships.

I deeply hope I sheltered my children from the worst of who I am. I hope that they are products of a better environment. Products of better people.

I am incredibly proud of each of them. They are wonderful, compassionate, smart, intelligent, independent adults. Perhaps the greatest compliment I could pay them is to say I would be proud to be like any of them. I aspire to be who they are.

I could never write this when my mum was alive. Mum worried intensly about us and blamed herself for any pain we might encounter or feel. Mum was only ever responsible for building me up though…nothing she did tore anything away from me. I will be forever in her debt for the strength of her unquestioning and ridiculous love. I miss her terribly.

So here we are and it is thoughts of my mother that flips the switch off and now I feel all the horribleness of loss that I seek desperately to protect myself from. Mum always had a way of tearing through all of my armour to get at what was really wrong. She never judged. She never condemned. I rarely encountered a more caring person who was so painfully damaged at the same time.

Mum looked into her life and committed to making sure we were protected from the world that so brutally beat her (sometimes literally). She took all the pain, consumed it, and thereby kept it from us while it consumed her. If I could be half the person she was I would have done well.

It is out now. I feel better now. I know that if not for the other, if not for the small communities of family we build around ourselves the temptation to step off the ledge would be so much stronger and easier to succumb to. I am not afraid to admit that I am not strong enough alone to save myself. I need these small pieces of my heart I have torn away and sent into the world to remind me that I am needed and loved.

It keeps me alive.

I love and am loved
by my wife
by my children
by my family
by my self
I am not alone
I will never be alone
nothing changes this
not poverty
not ruin
not death
not vengeful hate
nor sad bitterness
i am rich beyond compare
this is me
now and always

The greatest challenge to the idea of God is pain, suffering and death in the world. Nothing else comes close to challenging the concept or idea of God than these things.

We cannot comprehend a God that cannot or will not respond to these things immediately. We cnanot comprehend a God that would allow these things in a created environment.

No amount of shouting “FREE WILL” along with “WE CAUSE THESE THINGS” with crazy insane eye rolling changes a person’s doubt against these things. No amount of rationalizing deals with tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. unless you appeal to some esoteric mythological narrative where the acts of one or two people resulted in subjecting all future generations to untold natural and unaturally caused suffering.

Nothing is satisfying.

As author Philip Yancey once asked in his seminal book Where is God when it hurts?

For many people the answer is simple – nowehere. There is no God. If there is it is not a God I care to accept given the amount of pain and suffering and death in the world.

It is certainly a question people have asked since they began conceiving of supernatural beings as explanations for natural phenomenon.

The text of Job from the Hebrew Bible is considered the oldest text in the Judeo-Christian canon by most scholars with a date of somewhere in the 6th century BCE. The narrative relates the story of a man who endures horrible physical and emotional suffering as a result simply of God allowing it. God is aware of the suffering before it happens, allows it to happen, and then rewards Job afterward.

Horrible.

According the the Biblical narrative timeline the story of Adam and Eve is generally the first story of humanity. Within this narrative we find the story of Cain and his brother Abel – children of Adam and Eve. Cain murders his brotherAbel out of jealousy because God responds to his sacrifice of lamb positively and Cain’s sacrifice of the fruits of the earth (grains) negatively. Cain is a farmer. Abel is a shepherd.

One can go into grand detail about how God’s choice is likely because of some inherent goodness in Abel’s heart and corruption in Cain’s but this is not in the narrative. For all we know God is a carnivore who hates vegetables.

Where is God? Nowhere for Abel. He simply condemns Cain after the fact. Rabbi Sacks says in his reflection on the Shoah that God was in the words ‘Your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.’”. Additionally Sacks says God is in the words ‘You shall not murder.’ and ‘You shall not oppress a stranger’.

Sacks God is a God incapable of helping in ways we would wish. The God of free will etc. This is the neutered God who cries with us and rails against evil the way we do but whose solution is too distant for us to understand or find any current hope in.

Nothing is satisfying.

No religion or faith provides a God who helps with our current pain…only a God who promises to help “some day” or helps haphazardly and accorrding to “mysterious ways” that cannot be questioned.

This is the God that favours one football team over another. Saves on person from a fire while 17 more die 10 miles away in a flood.

Nothing is satisfying.

Even the idea of there being no God is not satisfying. It removes meaning from our lives and existance. No amount of “you create your own meaning now in how you live” blah blah blah helps.

Nothing is satisfying.

Everything is either existential angst or existential denial. As the author of Ecclessiastes 12:8 says  “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. Everything is meaningless!”

Nothing is satisfying.

bitter as a lime
left alone on the branch
as harvest passes it by
only to fall to the ground
and learn in bitter irony
the sweetness that comes
with the ripening of rot
before being swept away
leaving nothing but seeds
to dry beneath the sun

“Christ is dead and risen”
– Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible (1706), Romans 8:32-39

 

Christ is both dead and alive. Christ is both crucified and resurrected. Christ in Christian theology exists in states of contradictory duality.

This is not a popular opinion as the death and resurrection of Christ are seen as having occured as historical events within a point in linear time. This is not a popular opinion because without the living Christ and the resurrection there is no hope from a Christian perspective. It is heretical to consider Christ as dead.

However as an expression of God (or the Godhead) burst into real time, the very real God in human flesh, one is forced to wonder about the aspect of God that exists outside of time and all linear restrictions. That God who witnesses and experiences all things at once, eternally. That God who experiences both the crucifixion and the resurrection as a constant state of has happened/is happening/will happen. This is not unlike the idea of Erwin Schrödinger’s cat and the idea of quantum superposition.

“Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, though the idea originated from Albert Einstein.^[1] It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a hypothetical cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.” – Wikipedia

It is important to note that Schrödinger intended his thought experiment to show the absurdity of the theory of quantum superposition and the idea that anything could exist in two states at once. In fact the idea has only grown in strength.

Christ is crucified and ressurected. Christ is both God and Man. These are states of contradictory duality that exist simultaneously in Christ. Unlike with quantum superposition however, observing Christ will not end the duality or state of superposition. Happily scripture manages this problem by reporting God stating in Exodus 33:20 that God cannot be observed –

“You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live.”

There is no observation of Christ allowed, only observation by inference…the way we infer the existence of a black hole or a distant planet by the gravitational effect it has on an observable object.

The idea of Christ remaining crucified eternally is a poignant expression of just how deep the sacrifice of Good Friday truly is. That Christ bears the sins of the world forever. The idea of Christ existing in a constant state of resurrection more deeply presents the overcoming of death at Easter showing him existing in a constant state of victory eternally.

That Christ can contain both death and life within himself eternally at once is an expression of his Godhead.

“Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!” – Memorial Acclamation

“Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here. ”

― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

What miserable days we live in right now…some more than others. It is Good Friday and the church as we understand it to be the body of Christ is truly invisible and universal these days. Unable to gather physically it must do the unusual (for it) – rely upon and trust that Christ continues where we cannot.

Of all the writers I have read none come closest to expressing how I imagine Christ to be than Shisaku Endo in his brutal and beautiful work Silence. Endo captures the essence of the hope I have no matter how hard I try to eliminate it.

I work very hard at trying to rid myself of this Christ and his church. Day and night I put effort into it but try as I might I cannot fully eradicate his presence. He remains a stubborn shadow in my life. A small voice and a silent presence.

I have stepped away from church and this, it seems to me, is best for both me and the church. I always struggled with the human attempt to mimic Christ individually and corporately as an institution, even when I was a large part of that institution. I always felt forced and misplaced.

I think I prefer the accidental ministry of the world as I flow through it. The unintentional eruption of Christ from my action and inaction and from others around me.

As someone who has come to learn that half of my heritage comes from a Jewish father I struggle too with the role Christians and the church have played historically in the intolerance and persecution of Jews and the Jewish community. Ironic given Christ as Jew. I want no part in persecution and intolerance. I want no part in bringing hate and death…and yet…I cannot remove myself from my Catholic and catholic upbringing.

“Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.” – Shūsaku Endō, Silence

These days for myself and others it is the silence of God that rings loudly in our ears, Silence in the face of pain and suffering. I do not need to hear the words of others who speak of how our actions and words are really Christ’s in the world. This is no great comfort to the dying. It is pathetic and reeks of rationalization.

Good Friday epitomizes the silence of God.

“Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani!”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The words of Christ ring out from Golgotha and into the deep silence of God. It is Christ’s most human moment and linked to his moment in the garden when he pleads “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.”

Christ is always on the cross for me. I think this is why I prefer the Catholic crucifix to the empty cross of the Protestants. There is no empty cross. There is no ressurection…only a miserable hope for it.

We look forward to Sunday and the resurrection the way a lost hiker looks forward to being found. The way a person buried in the rubble of a collapsed building looks forward to being rescued. We hope and we hope and we hope but for all of this we are still buried.

“I did pray. I kept on Praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering.” ― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

I have always been afraid of the dark. The empty dark keeps me awake. The emptiness of my faith is as much like the dark as anything. ThoughI cannot shake that stubborn and foolish human tendancy to hope. In this hope I reflect; I reflect on the ways I could be better. I reflect on the ways I could have been better. I reflect on the deafening silence of Christ in my life or my own mute nature that refuses to see; that refuses to hear.

“We priests are in some ways a sad group of men. Born into the world to render service to mankind, there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task.” ― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

Good Friday is the vast dark present of the world; a world empty of Christ and God yearning for Sunday and a resurrection that keeps stretching itself ahead of us, out of reach.

“I, too, stood on the sacred image. For a moment this foot was on his face. It was on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, on the face that was before me on the mountains, in my wanderings, in prison, on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love. Even now that face is looking at me with eyes of pity from the plaque rubbed flat by many feet.

“Trample !”said those compassionate eyes. “Trample ! Your foot suffers in pain ; it must suffer like all the feet that have stepped on this plaque. But that pain alone is enough. I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here.”

“Lord, I resented your silence.”

“I was not silent. I suffered beside you.”

― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

On this Good Friday as I reflect on Christ and his crucifixion I reflect too on my own resentment. I resent Christ. I resent the silence. I resent the unending pain of the world, but like a fool I continue to hope for the resurrection and I continue to whimper into the darkness because what choice do I have? His presence continues to tease me like the feeling you are being watched only to turn around and see no one.

One of the greatest acts of foolishness is the attempt by people to understand God, second only to God’s attempt to understand people.