Saturday living

For many, hope is a luxury they can do without. The here and now is enough. They sit in ivory towers, close enough to the heavens, there is no need for answers. What are questions worth when every desire and need is fulfilled? Suffering is so far from them, there is no wrestling, no urgency, no struggle to fight to comprehend. Their hands never dirty with the mud of grief, their tears never bear the bitterness of deep loss. They jump from lily-pad to lily-pad manipulating the stars to align. The world holds only the colors of predictability. They fight only for the control of their destinies, managing the day to day to serve their purposes. Smiles and laughter are easy, never a consequence for the colors of melancholy maroon, or navy need. They seem to be whole from birth to death, the ring masters taming circumstance.

I would give anything to know that feeling.

I've spent most of my days holding my breath from one crashing wave to the next, breaking the surface only to be sucked back under, tides taking me farther and farther from the shore of wealth. Most of the time I didn't even know I was truly drowning. I thought struggle, barely surviving, it all seemed so normal. Injustice was a far thought, more theory than reality. I always thought it would work out. It had to. There would be a moment when everything came together. I would get my due. One day... right? Blind and ignorant, I was so shocked when finally, I broke.

There is a moment when if you live hard enough, give deep enough, love with everything, believe with more than your soul and work to see only the good, something terrible will happen and every belief you have will break. Suddenly the bright lights of reality shine and somewhere deep inside, eyes open to the truth of life. Not everything is roses. Some do not have the fortune of hope as a luxury, but when that deep place finally breaks, hope is all you have left. It's Easter morning. Friday everything dies, but Sunday shows itself as new.

This hope, born of loss, evil, the processes of a world hell bent on it's own desires, this hope takes on something different. It moves from the ease of thoughtless "tomorrow" into the clinging desperation of now. Hope is not what it seems. This hope is violent. It is determined and justly angry. Friday it finds itself on a cross, gasping, wrasping out a weak yelp for vinegar water. It bleeds from flesh having been ripped, the world shaking with pain and rejection. It stares in the eyes of the executioner and begs for mercy only to be turned away, and still, it prays for those that stand and watch in morbid fascination. Victimized for a moment is born of giving yourself to the last drop, praying, unceasing in its belief that truth really will win. It recognizes how powerless it is to the heart of itself. It hopes for the sake of hope, only to be met with determined death.

Then, it gives up. It dies. The spirit is committed and acceptance comes in a strange sort of peace. It's an uncommon silence. A vacuum pulls the sound, the sights and you find yourself in a white room, no floor, no ceiling, suspended in some sort of neutral place.

This is when acceptance is most painful. You reconcile yourself that nothing is as it was and never will be again. You will never see the world the same, people the same, yourself the same. Every injustice, every moment of violation by every person you ever loved come rushing back in. In terrible moments of deep sadness, your heart becomes a real of past memories, the highlights being the ugly things. Every violation, betrayal, lie and selfishness inflicted by those you love rises back to the surface in amazing clarity. It's all the things you ignored, the truths you looked past the evil you willingly blinded yourself to. Cruel words, jokes, the very people you loved the most taking what they can from you, all the while, your foolish heart had been all too willing to give it over, assuming everyone has good intentions. So much trust betrayed. The bitterness that never seemed to be a struggle rises in the back of your throat like the bile the morning after partying too hard.

As you sit in the suspension, you wonder at the people around you. Why? I trusted you...

As it all crashes in so fast, so deep, every wound you seemed to escape all of the sudden sears you all the new. There is a deep loneliness that hits in those moments. Everyone you ever trusted, really they had never been trustworthy. They had never been the people you thought they were, it had never been the life you thought it was. You've spent a lifetime chasing ghosts. I empathize with Paul when the scales fell off. That must have been an awful moment. To face those he had probably loved, realizing the depths of their evil, to face himself in the depths of his, the world shattered into a million pieces.

Then a noise starts to pierce the silence. The neutral room fades as it takes you a moment to realize the noise that is pounding in your head is really your own scream. Rage pours forth in a torrent coming from places you didn't even know existed. You want to hit something, someone, to release an anger, a wrath that seems to have no end. It will never help though. No one hears the scream but you. Nothing will change this reality and this is the reality you have been avoiding your whole life. I never wanted to see the people I loved this way. I wanted them to be good, to be kind, to be just and loving. But they aren't and they most likely won't be changing anytime soon. That reality happens to be worse than anything. In this moment, there is no justice. The youth I carried around, the hopeful belief in people, it has died along with my delusions of things one day magically working out. No one will be able to fix this. Nothing will give me my years back, there is nothing that can be done about the scars that will be left behind.

It's Saturday and Sunday has not yet come. In this moment, though youth has died, there is another truth that starts to take root. Though no one can fix any of it, now that truth has been revealed, the more important question becomes, "what now?" Piece by piece, the world has to move on and where I fit into it becomes paramount. What do I believe? Who is trustworthy? What does it look like to live in a world that truly is filled with evil everyday?

Who is really going to win?

Will it be those that sought to only use others as a footstool? Will it be the evil that steals trust that brings deep love? Will it be the ugly that seeks to eclipse the beauty?

See, most of life is lived on Saturday. Before the day break Sunday morning, before the real hope can be fulfilled, most of us only know Saturday. We are somewhere in between the death and resurrection. We haven't seen the empty tomb, but there is around the same area that was torn apart by the betrayal and revelation, something takes root. It mingles with the pain, the grief, the loss, the anger and wrath, but it's there. It's the quiet decision to not break. A solidarity begins to take hold, a silent determination, lonely breath into nothingness as you release a righteous "fuck you." To every person, place and thing that has taken what wasn't theirs, to every lover that sold you out for themselves, to every sibling that trampled on you for their pain, for every friend that betrayed you and every pastor that put their own belief's ahead of your heart, to every moment when I naively placed my heart, my loyalty, my trust, my hope, at the foot of someone who walked right past.

A deep satisfaction comes over as the awareness that finally, this may be my chance to break away, to find something different, to be everything I couldn't before.... me.

Saturday is when hope is needed. Sunday it is fulfilled, but Saturday, that's when it counts. In this moment there are no empty tombs in my life. Everything is wrapped in gauze, rigid with death. But that matters not. Death is only a part of this. If the tomb remains empty, fine. If not, fine as well. Justice will find me. Somehow, someway, it will find me. My hope is not in circumstances, it is not in people, in what seems to be, but instead, it is what will be.

In the mirror image of my Father, though it is dim, I have at least the vestiges of His fingerprints. Determined to the end of me, I will be a part of justice.

For all of the ways my heart has seen injustice, for all of the ways I have lost, for all of the things taken stolen, for the days when compassion was unseen, when love was unreturned, when my failures spelled ridicule, when shame was written on me as truth, when I had no voice, I will do what I have to bring heaven to earth. I am all that I am, limited, finite and foolish, but I have been marred, scarred and forgotten. I have been forsaken and disdained and for the life of me, I will never do it to another. I have to believe in the overcoming of all that is unfair and evil.

I may not have been born in a mud-hut only to die at 13, but I know the feeling of powerlessness, of feeling subject to those around and never comprehending why they treat you the way they do. I know the deep desire to only be a pleasure to those you love and have them turn on you as if you are a burden. I know the feeling of handing your heart to those you love only to have them reject it, and it's a different sort of death. No one should have to pay just because they were born in a certain place, incurred certain wounds, or loved without regard to themselves. When the innocent are overburdened, when people are victimized by those that are meant to love and protect them, when hearts that are fresh and hopeful are crushed, it's not okay. It will never be okay and I will never believe my Father is okay with it.

This hope that is now in me has nothing to do with a certain kind of life, wealth or love, but it depends on something bigger, more powerful, deeper and more real. It's based on the belief that Jesus was a revolutionary that would rage into battle for someone's heart in violent passion. Heaven and earth can blend in a magnificent way when there is a vision beyond the circumstance. I hear His words now, His parables and I see a man filled with violent hope. Things can be different, the world can be a better place, but it starts with seeing the battle as a fight against that which would steal the beautiful things: innocence, love, trust, honesty and faith. I can see why He would want to throw those that hurt children to drown. Childlike faith is to be desired not because it's blind, but because it is determined. It is simple, but powerful, the way a child loves their mother. No matter how terrible that mother, the child will always love. It doesn't see her failures, but the child will always cultivate the moments of love.

Faith and hope cultivate the moments of beauty in life and dwell on those. Saturday living is in seeing the world as it is, but marching on. In a quote from one of my favorite bands, it's having the heart not to lose it. Before Sunday arrives, Saturday means choosing to bring justice to a world that violates the innocent. It's recognizing the terrible, feeling the wounds, breaking and dying and being honest and angry about that which would anger the Father, but it's believing He will right it. Justice will win. It won on Sunday once, and it will win again. Everyday there are little victories, there are empty tombs everywhere. Perseverance is just about attaining something, it's about being part of the effort.

Until Sunday....