The Invasion

Despair can be prayer. Anything can be prayer, really.

This morning I woke up after a very rough weekend, and got into my car to go to work. My youngest son sent me off with his usual sun-shiney cheeriness, flapping his little hand with all his might. I am convinced that, if that doesn't get your spirits up and give you the perfect day, you are in desperate trouble. Love of such purity I'd argue (passionately) is next to impossible to get anywhere else, comparable to Anthony the Great's begging the sun to stay down so he could keep seeing the Uncreated Light of God. The love of a child for a parent is far more powerful than they'll ever know and cannot be experienced by a celibate.

I did not respond today to my son today. I mean, yes, I smiled at how cute he was and waved back as I threaded my way through the wet lawn, but his small goodbyes echoed in my ears only, going nowhere near my wretched heart.

And as I sat in my car I knew that I could not pray. I'd no business doing so, for this morning I could practically smell the sulfur in my nostrils. My own interior voice was so mutated that trying to use it was a form of self-harm. So I put on Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, said out loud "God, I'm here, whatever the hell that means. All I can give you is the fact that I exist.", and then I listened to Severian being seduced by a demonic being who looked like a pretty girl. She didn't succeed. And that gave me some hope.

I got into work and somehow got my Bible open. Don't ask me how, it just occurred to me that I really should read it. So I cracked it open:

"So Jesus went about the whole of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every kind of disease and infirmity among the people; so that his fame spread throughout the whole of Syria, and they brought to him all those who were in affliction, distressed with pain and sickness of every sort, the possessed, the lunatics, the palsied; and he healed them. And a great multitude followed him, from Galilee and Decapolis, Jerusalem and Judaea, and the country beyond Jordan." -Matthew 4:23-25

Later on Christ promises that the gates of Hell will never prevail. I don't know why, but this particular time I could feel it. The pounding on the gates. The drums outside, the shouts, the promises of rescue. The Gospel refers to the gates of Hell; Hades is not on the attack, Christ is breaking in. It is a siege to rescue hearts and souls. I may be trapped, but I am not alone. Christ and the hosts are on the other side, and they are coming. I may have put myself here, however accidentally, but they do not care. One should not be in Hell, no matter what one has done. What I did to put myself here is irrelevant, only that I am here. It is enough for them.

And so I sit and wait. 

Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not. 

I am definitely in Hell. I feel the anguish, I smell the sulfur, I hear the screams of pain. I cannot open these wretchedly heavy gates. 

But I can sit by these awful things, hear the poundings and smile. It is the smile of someone who knows that a great reckoning is coming, a smile that puts fear into the hearts of captors. And all of a sudden Hell isn't a prison. It's an arena, a slaughter field.

I just got front-row seats to an ass-whooping the likes of which the Pelennor Fields would be jealous. A pity, I forgot popcorn.

You Have the Time

"I want to live"

In the anime Castlevania the summoner Isaac tells Hector, one of his friends, that he had finally realized something : he had a future. And because he had a future, because he had time, he was going to make use of it. And that the powers that be, the people who control culture and everything else in our system, specifically did not want people to know it. If all you have is the present, with no future, there is no hope. And therefore you are easy to control. But Isaac had a future. And therefore he hoped. And therefore he could no longer be controlled. It's one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned.

You have the time.

Yeah yeah yeah, live every day. Don't sink into a malaise or be paralyzed with fear and all that, but you, the person reading this, have time. No, I don't know how much, but probably enough to finish this blog post.

Hopefully.

The only thing that matters is what you do with the time you have, with what's in front of you, right now. Answers to your questions are nice, but they do not change the fact that all you have is what's in front of you, right now. It is perfectly reasonable to have hope for a future.

Yes, you have concerns. Problems. Issues with the world that feel very pressing. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those questions, because they have a funny way of defining your life. But you have time for those. 

The blessing of youth is the feeling that you only have so much time, along with the feeling of boundless energy. The curse of youth is thinking that if today doesn't resolve everything then all is lost, and that your energy is useless. That's not true. Full stop.

Your questions will not be resolved today, probably. That's okay. We have such an emphasis on being rational beings that we think it means we know everything. Well here's a rational thought then: The rational thing to do when you don't have enough information is to investigate and be willing to put in the time.

Yes, I'm telling you to be patient, if there's no reason to have the information now then don't break yourself to go get it. Because you have the time.

Because outside that Hell of "I don't know the answer fuck my life I don't know" there's a whole world. It's right next to you. And you can do something about that. I know that doesn't solve the Big Problems. I didn't say it did. But you're not a Big Person. If you were they wouldn't be Big Problems, would they?

There are small problems. Just the right size. And if you conquer those small problems, you will be larger. It's a promise. Each time you focus on one of those smaller problems the next problem will be smaller. And smaller. And smaller.

And one day you will be what you once thought of as a Big Person, and thus able to deal with what you used to think of as The Big Problem. It won't be a Big Problem anymore. Because you'll be bigger than it.

But that's not today. And it doesn't need to be today, not by and large.

You have a future. 

And it's worth living. No matter how much pain and anguish await you, no matter how big and large and freaking scary the whole enterprise looks, it will be worth doing. Because someday it'll be in your rear view mirror, and you'll chuckle a little bit, as you realized that used to really get you tripped up. The journey will be worth it. 

I promise.

Blessed are the patient. They will inherit the land.

-Matthew 5:4