The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

Once, in a time that gets further and further away with each passing second, a time so long ago that I would barely recognize myself, but still so near to me that its shadow is constantly in my heart, I was going to kill myself. I'd had enough. The whole entirety of my life felt like a gigantic bruise. At the time I couldn't even remember half the things I'd been through, but their shadows had voices. And they hadn't stopped screaming in a very very long time. And so I'd decided that enough was enough. A plan came to me. I knew what I needed to do.

But something in my head, a voice I'd not heard in a very long time, spoke with a force that made me pause. The awfulness that was in my head was not going to stop should I die. It would only get worse. My body was playing interference with the noise I was hearing at that point. It would only intensify after death. And, for whatever reason, I believed that. But that left me in a bind. Because the noise was still going on, right then, and I remembered asking why on earth I shouldn't just embrace it and let it hollow me out. It wasn't going to stop. I couldn't stop it.

The icon that I bumped into was not this one. But it had a similar facial configuration. The thing is that earlier icons of Christ were designed to have two halves: an angry, judgmental half, and a merciful soft one. And, as I stared at this icon, I found that the noise just got louder and louder and louder until I could almost hear it with my ears because my mind was trying to receive a thought and it didn't really want to so it was just cranking the noise so I could continue alongside my doomed course. But, somehow, it got through.

If all I've seen is wrath there must be mercy somewhere. And I want to find it.

And then the noise stopped. Merciful sweetness, it just stopped. I stood in utter interior silence. I could relax. I could breathe. I could just exist. I was free. It wasn't a lack of noise, it was peace. And I let myself just be in it. I never wanted to leave it. Even an instant of this peace, of this silence, which was definitely not coming from me, which had nothing to do with me, was enough of a reason to live.


And then I heard it.

The smallest of whispers.

Is everything alright now?
 
Small. Still. Like a child whispering a secret into your ear. But inconceivably more powerful. And anyone who has had a child whisper into your ear knows that is the most powerful thing in the world. To have a little voice in your hear, telling you the most earnest, the most deathly serious of their secrets, or just anything at all, really, will change your life, regardless of what is said. I have two of my own. I know.

This whisper outstripped it. There was a power behind that whisper that could have unmade me in a moment. I trembled with fear to hear it, from the sheer power of it. A choice had been made to preserve me, even while pressing down the pain, even if only for a moment. I responded with a joy that I did not understand. And still don't. "Yes, yes it's OK. There is still hope."

A few years passed and I began to forget. That's no crime, I suppose, but it  did make life a lot harder. And then, one day, the album Nothing is Sound was released, and this song was on it:


In the coming years, as the shadows in my mind continued to scream as loudly as they could, I would find random spots where I could listen to this song. I could feel the Silence behind it, that presence that reminded me that all it was going to take was a bit more pushing. Just keep going. I would find mercy soon enough. Even if that meant just listening to the song and waiting it out.

Boy, the Silence's definition of soon and my definition of soon do not line up at all. But push I did. Somehow the woman who interceded for me in the above moment, in a moment of Silence herself, decided that I was marriageable material. I certainly didn't argue. I still try not to. And so we keep on. So far two children have followed. Silence sits behind their eyes, and I only hope I can help them keep it.

I didn't know it, but I had a hard weekend. The perennial conversation about embracing the chaos or the Silence was very strong in my heart. I was barely aware of it, of course.  Until this morning, that is, when I stepped out  to go to work. I didn't know the darkness in my heart.

Until I heard a small voice behind me.

"Daddy have good day at work!"

I turned. I'd heard that with my ears.

And he was just standing there, waving.

Well, trying to anyway. He's two, so it was more like his hand just bopping all over the place. But gosh he was pumping that hand hard. I stopped and waved back. He was very serious. No smile. I wonder if he knew what was in my heart. I sure didn't, not at the time. But the hand kept pumping. I stopped. He stopped. I waved. He pumped his hand back. I couldn't stop looking at him. So I backed up to the car, waving. He stayed at the door, pumping that hand in every direction he could think to put it.

And then I came to work. Something had just happened, but I'd no idea. And the above song had just been uploaded by Switchfoot.

I'm sitting here on the edge of tears.

Fortunately not all tears are evil.

Just a little further.

Book of the Long Sun

 

I hoped this book would be different from Book and Urth of the New Sun. The last thing I wanted was for Wolfe to try to bottle lightning again. I mean, it had been well over a decade since the last two books had been released, so I kinda figured that Wolfe wasn't out for a cash grab. 

Boy, I did not know what I was getting myself into.

The set-up of the book is simple. Patera Silk, a priest of a small parish onboard the "whorl" (a roving space station filled with people who have forgotten they're in a space station) is called by the Outsider, a minor and obscure god, to save his parish from imminent destruction. Of course at this point he wasn't really aware that it was in danger in the first place...

And thus begins the rollercoaster.

Now, I'd heard people complain about how slow this book was, so I was prepared for it. I don't think they quite sold it hard enough; parts of this book are an absolute slog to get through. Wolfe's prose requires sometimes a pass or five to get a basic understanding of the text, and there's some points in time where I shrugged and went on, filling in what happened from the context of the next few hundred pages. This sucker is 1300 pages long. It is packed with plot, characterization, so much freaking worldbuilding, philosophy, and theology, that to call this anything less than a science fantasy attempt at a Russian novel would be idiotic.  The plot in particular seems rather byzantine in structure, looping around on itself multiple times, intentionally producing impasses that let you learn more about the characters and their whorl, and to take a breather.

Y'know, several hundred page breathers.

No big deal.

Up until the last fifteen pages (no, I am not exaggerating!!! The last fif-frickin-teen!) I'd no idea what the hell I was reading. None. The plot continued to balloon and balloon and I felt like I was watching some ancient sea monster come out of the ocean to devour me alive. And then the last fifteen pages happened. No, do not skip to the end. Even if it does make sense to you, the surprise is well worth the wait. Yes, I do mean it. Those 1200+ pages were ample build-up to the surprise at the end, at least in my estimation. I cannot tell you why that is. You either trust me and can weather the cloud of unknowing for 1200 pages or you can't. But when it snapped into place, when Wolfe finally revealed what he was doing for 1300 pages, I found myself nodding in appreciation and enjoyment.

Book of the Long Sun does not work as Book and Urth of the New Sun did, but that is what is makes it special. As I sit here, with the dying embers of the story living inside of me, as I look back at one of the longest journeys with a book I've ever taken, I feel years and years older. That was one hell of a journey. I learned a lot of things, most of which were barely registered, nevermind understood.

Whereas Book and Urth of the New Sun were waking dreams, which I loved so much that I almost sobbed when I stopped reading them, Book of the Long Sun feels like a conversation with a grandparent. They have a lot to tell you. Sometimes you don't know why they tell you what they chose to. But years later, their words still glow in my memory and I find myself taking strength from what they said. 

I remember how they looked when they said their words.

I find myself back in the car, or the room, or that afternoon walk. I can smell the air. Hear the birds. The crickets. The sky is the exact same size as it is now. The world made absolutely no sense. But I didn't need it to.

Because they loved me, then. And they do, still.

I promise that I will see you again. I find myself whispering that to them, now, as I think about the Long Sun. Or is it when I think about the long walks? Or the car rides? Or when we were just sitting in their living room, talking about nothing in particular?

Does it really matter?

God Died

The Crucifixion, by myself. March 2020

Acrylic and gold leaf on a handcross

God died. Every time I think about that fact something catches in my throat. And I find myself sitting, wondering about that.

I should think about it more often.

One of the things that has always stuck out at me about the world is how brutal and uncaring a place it is. I'm typing this on a computer manufactured in China, a place known for its oppression and evil. This computer runs because someone who is a slave for all intents and purposes helped put it together. Running the servers required to be able to type my post hurts the environment that I live in. I live in the USA, which is essentially policing the world because we've created such an awful network of global economic ties that we can't afford not to, not without risking our own economy. Our country routinely butchers its young because we can't control ourselves and the best most of us seem to have as an excuse is to deny the personhood of said little individuals, using the flimsiest of cowardly arguments to try and not face such a horrific thing.

And yes, if you are pro-choice and reading this blog, I am talking about you.

Yes, you.

Suck it up. I know you're a coward. At best. At worst you're advocating genocide, actively. I find that monstrous. And disgusting. Yeah, go cry. Or be angry. You're alive and capable of doing it, which I can't say for the hundreds of thousands of children you're OK with butchering by dismemberment and burns. At least give them a frickin' burial, as opposed to throwing them into trashcans.  At least blacks got to claim to be 3/5s of a person legally! Even if that is a moral evil that is so horrifying I can barely comprehend it!

Yes, you are morally worse than the 3/5's rule. By a very long shot.

In case it is still not clear, yes you, a thousand times you.

OK, that's out of the way.

Let's see if anyone else is still reading this Great and Holy Friday post.

For the rest of you who are either disgusted but reading on anyway or nodding your head in assent or whatever, it doesn't get much better in the U.S. The simple fact of the matter is that the Republican party ain't Christian, not by a long shot. The Old Testament may have its faults in the modern liberal's eyes, but they shouldn't take issue with the laws about taking care of the poor and the alien, the folks who don't fit in whatever system a society has. Care for the poor is not a private affair, period. So claiming that supporting the Republican or the libertarian party is supporting life or is Christian is a laughingstock, because it is our civic and political duty to support those not as well off as us, regardless of how deserving you think they are. In fact, to care for the undeserving is at the height of Christian charity! So all those deaths, spiritual and physical? Yeah, that's on the Republicans and those who vote for them. It's longer, slower, and not quite as graphic as the liberal genocide (what era of liberalism, classical or modern, hasn't had large scale genocide?? Really?), but it is just as deadly.

Yes, I am talking to you. That person who voted for Trump simply because he stated he was pro-life.

Yes, you.

My indignation is not as strong, but it should be. That's on me. But you backing those charlatans? Yeah, look in the mirror to see who's responsible for that.

And don't get me started on the military, which focuses on ruining souls so that they may become killing machines. I've never been part of a system that so wrecks a human soul so quickly, so efficiently. It is possible to train people to kill without wrecking their soul. But we ain't doing it.

Our system is built upon oppression and death, worldwide. As a race we are a miserable, unfeeling, unloving pile of filth.  To deny it is to engage in sheer fantasy, of the variety that is unhealthy to indulge in, and yet far too easy. We look the other way so that we can get ours. I look the other way so I can get mine.

And what was the Christian God's response to this dog eat dog world that we willingly set up? He let it crush Him. After three years of doing nothing but good, so much that the Gospel of John says that all the books in the world could not contain His acts of goodness, He let the inevitable happen to Him. Let it. He let us kill Him.

He walked into a deathtrap and suffocated to death in a manner I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

So the next time you start talking about systemic change for the benefit of mankind remember what God's solution to this mess was: to be crushed by the existing system. And to keep on loving, at all times. To keep seeing the good in the oppressor, to refuse to let that define your view of them, to acknowledge that goodness and love transcend this broken and awful world, to refuse to be corrupted by your pain, because Love will win. It is as inevitable as the creation of the Grand Canyon. But the water in the Grand Canyon did not care to become a rock, to dig forcibly against said rock it encountered. Rocks chip away. They fall apart. The water knew better. It stayed water. And won.

The side of Christ gushed water. And blood. My soul is very much so a rocky, hard, unfeeling, ugly, unloving thing. I wish I could say that I will be won over to Him in a day, a week, a month, two months, decades, but the Grand Canyon took thousands, millions possibly, of years to form! And it wasn't actively resisting the process, unlike myself.  And make no mistake, I do. By the second. Hatred feels strong. Isolation feels so empowering, even if it leaves me a miserable wreck of a specimen. So who knows if I will be able to soften my heart at all? Certainly not I, but I hope so, as best I can. The best I can do is to keep letting the Blood and the Water wash over me. To weep from the agony of having to let go of the pain and the horrors perpetrated by and to me and the world, to see the face of the One Who is with me all the way down this elevator to Hell. To scream at the One Who is very patiently and lovingly holding me as the poison is drawn out of my body and soul.

And then to gasp in relief as I see the beaming face of my wife. And my children. And my friends. And my family. And to realize that I am not alone in this fight for my soul, for our soul. I may be a miserable wreck of a human being, but Christ has given me people to sit beside me as I am held, kicking and screaming and cursing at the One Who is drawing out the poison, because of the immensity of the pain. They are there to help me realize that the One Who does this is not a torturer, but a healer. And that sometimes the difference between the two is merely intent, if nothing else. I cannot focus on the Face of the One Who sacrificed Himself for me because of the sheer pain and rage, and so therefore I have been my given my family and friends to try and help me focus.

Because this only ends one way.

Only one.

There's only one way out of this mess. 

And I need to focus so that way I can greet it with open arms.

It may be a week. A month. Two decades. Two seconds. But it is coming. There are some days I look at that with a joy that I cannot begin to express. To see the flaming wreckage collapse! To see it rot and fall away! Oh what a day! To see my part in this hellish facade melt away, what a blessing that will be. Death is not the problem, not anymore, but the solution. I only hope that, when that day comes and I finally get to go Home, to finally be in a place where this cycle of misery is no longer a thing, that I truly rejoice that I have left the insanity behind. That I will wipe my neighbor's eyes, not continue to hit them because I'm scared about what will happen when we stop. That I will comfort and heal without fear of reprisal. Because I'm a coward for even thinking that as a possibility. I hope to transcend that fear.

I hope we all do.

Christ did not stop the clock. The definition of compassion is to suffer evil in the other. Christ did this. Willingly.

I hope I have half His courage.

Y'know, before it's too late.

Because some day it will be.

The Book (and Urth) of the New Sun

This is the third take I've had on this review. Every time I write my thoughts I find them woefully inadequate. There are concepts in this book I had no idea that I needed in order to understand myself, nevermind the world. And, now that I'm coming to the last fifty pages of The Urth of the New Sun, I find that I am terrified of ending the book. But end it must, and I must figure out what I will do from here.

The previous two iterations of this review became more and more grandiose as they progressed, to the point to where I found that the painful humanity of the book was lost. But when I tried to walk it back the grandeur was also lost in sweeping statements on how petty the main character could be. I could not focus on both, even though the book did.

The last few years of having PTSD have been some of the most rewarding and insanely painful of my already-painful life. I've seen highs and lows that I wouldn't have known that anyone else had experienced, were it not for this book. Reading Wolfe's thoughts on time travel and salvation left me speechless. There are things in this book that are so real that they can hardly be believed. But real they are. This man knew, he had done it. But when I try to write about it I destroy what it is that I love about the book. I cannot talk about them, even though the book did.

Ending The Urth of the New Sun is like driving to the airport with someone you love quite deeply. You hang on every word, you savor every last sight, smell, sound, them. You know they will not be there, with you, for much longer, and so you drink them in as much as you can, praying that it's an illusion, hoping against all hope that when you get to the airport they'll say "JUST KIDDING! I'm staying here". You hope that this is the time they stay and you will not have to be parted from them, ever again. Maybe, maybe this time, the dream will not end.

They get on the plane.

The book ends.

And you have to wake up.

It is over.

But the dream continued, this time, somehow. My friends and family will come back to me and in a real way they never left. I will finally be able to fully enjoy the family and friends I have now! The book is over but I will return to it, to enjoy it anew. Eventually that pleasant dream, where the world makes sense and I'm not fighting by the skin of my teeth to maintain even a facade of mental health, will become reality. Eventually I will triumph. Like all properly Christian works, I am left with hope, as Severian strides off into the unknown. Wherever he is going, whatever The Increate will require him to do, he has triumphed.

This is not typical to the types of reviews I write, and for that I apologize. This is a very deeply personal book to me, and I find that it's almost impossible to write about. If you like sci-fi and fantasy, and find yourself wanting something of a similar depth to Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guinn, you will be not be disappointed here. Wolfe is a master, if not the master, of his craft. I cannot recommend this book enough.