Quick To Tears

If I look at you with exceeding tenderness
Forgive the intrusion on your privateness
I only try to see
Beyond the hair and the skin
To the roiling, gritty reality
Of you.

I am a green twig
Crushed by your careless passing.
In my darkness
The sap of that fresh wound glistens on my face
Then dries
In beads of longing and desire
Both primitive and present.

Beside you, I am beside myself
In driven waves
Of elation and guilt--
A newly sprouted branch
Moving gently in the thin, cool breath of Spring
Broken by the memory of your warm mouth on my neck,
Yet I am blameless in my intention.
I am sparkling--
Adventurous--
Clean--
And sometimes quick to tears.

Re-Posting of an Old Entry: Feet of Clay

In the midst of the worries of the job search, I have been trying to think. I’m reading Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinner, and Madmen, a Study of Gurus by Anthony Storr. He quotes Friedrich Neitzsche:

‘Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely – a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience.’

It occurred to me that I haven’t lost the conviction that God loves me which is the bedrock of faith. I believe, however, that faith will never intercede between my behavior and my fear (because I obey the command of my ego). The only thing, then, is God’s love. This seems a good thing to be stripped down to, at the end of the day. The conviction of God’s love is a pre-surrender to a new command.

So what would that surrender feel like? What would it be like? It would be nothing, just like my ego is nothing. My fear-thoughts are just that – little Observers that Observe something as fearful. My ego is a moment in the Observer which scares me and prompts me to manage fear with a bad behavior. My sovereign commander is nothing. Surrender would be a nothing that replaces the bad behavior. Surrender would be the Observer who sees no reason to react at all.

I must stand in the path of an oncoming train and calmly let it hit me. The calm is the utter surrender to the sovereignty of Truth. The train is the devastating will of God’s love; devastating only because it is so True that nothing else is worth owning. Oh what a glorious freedom. That is why faith only in God’s love for me is a pre-surrender because if there is nothing else, then all I have left to do is to turn and stand on the tracks. Surrender. Addiction is anything that gives you peace and causes problems in your life. Addictions bring peace and calm as a sour substitute for a will to freedom and the true desire for personal command. My only chance to learn how to command is based in the love of God.