An Elergy

I was going to leave this, I was planning to write it in a few weeks, but I'm not sure that it can wait, I'm not sure I can sleep until it's written. This is a work of semi-fiction, though barely, most of it memory.

If I looked you in the eye what would I say? I lost you, I think of all the things I would have said, all the things we could have done. We wasted the time, I can still smell your tobacco, the way you'd throw a fresh cigarette away if you saw me coming, not from a sense of shame, but of respect you'd toss it from your fingers. Sitting under that oak, you'd see me from a distance and my pace would quicken as I saw you, our paths converging never planned. What would I say to you if I looked you in the eye? Would I tell you that I loved you? Would I try to explain that you kept me alive? That I considered you my brother?

You were the only one who demanded nothing of me, you were the only one I didn't need to impress, you were the only one who never minded who I was or how I was. The thought of seeing you in that studio got me into school, it took me to a class where I would ignore the punches thrown at me, where I would fight guys twice my size to just get my jacket or my bag back, where I would have to search around the room to find anything.

The only people who stood up for me in those moments - God they might have well as written you a death sentence. They were the closest things I had to friends - they weren't sending me hate mail, pretending to defend me and punching me in the middle of drama undercover of characterisation. Regardless of the lies they spurted they were genuine. They helped you deeper into the world which live life to die. "I don't care if it kills me, none of us do, as long as we've lived for today like we've nothing to lose, I don't give a **** if I die tomorrow neither do they." Her voice echoes in my ears, just like her words when I told her you were gone "he can't be dead, I didn't think he could die." How fast she took back her words, how quickly she didn't mean it.

The courage you and that neo-Nazi classmate of yours gave me, every day you got me there, gave me the strength to get through, what a strange place that was? As I would wander home, standing looking into the water of the canal it was like I saw your face beneath the water, telling me that that poison I imagined, the downing that I dreamed of wasn't mine, because I had tomorrow and might see you again.

Oh and now that is yours, just a shadow of my memory, I begin to forget your voice. I can hardly remember you without regret, save for those long moments drinking coffee, hugging you and burying my face in the leather to smell that memory, laced with aftershave and cigarettes.

What would I say to you? I would tell you without hesitation that I wish I could take away the hurt, that I love you without question or falter, because I do consider you my brother, that I would have brought you back to life if I had thought that I could have. But now it's been well past two years since I saw you, and almost two years since I lost you and I still love you and that will never go away, but now it is time for something new. The memories are not worth the cost of remembering how sometimes I ran to you to escape the rubbish that people were throwing at me, how I felt safe when I was with you, how people didn't try to kick me in the back, the good stays locked in my heart, but those roads no longer walked.

Healing

God heals, physically, emotionally, spiritually, deeply. He takes away pain and suffering and I am just going to take this moment!

Glory, glory, glory to God in the highest heaven, hosanna my heart cries, hosanna my soul calls forth. You are more marvellous than the coming of the dawn, brighter than the sun and more glorious than the wonders of your creation. You are King of all that is within and without this world, your creatures cry to you glorious Father.

I have seen healing that it barely surprises me that my friends back hurts I pray and the pain vanishes. I have seen someone with a broken toe where all the swelling and bruising disappeared. I am a testimony to God's healing grace, physically, emotionally, spiritually and deeply. I live in freedom that I could have never known, but for the grace of God, a freedom that grows every year.

So glory to God in the highest heaven, because that is a song my soul really does cry out.

Of Mice and Men

There is this suddenness that comes over me in the middle of the night, a great desire as I'm about to fall asleep to do EVERYTHING. I want to read everything that has ever been written, I want to know everything that's ever been known, I want to find a way to live in perfect harmony with God, to never find myself turning from Him and His ways and plans. Yet as I fall into that blissful sleep which takes far longer to come than I would ever like, they slip away, like the best laid plans of mice and men falling far away into memory.

I'd like to start waking up like I used to, maybe I need to get the right sleep, I used to bounce, quite literally, out of bed, jumping up and almost run to my bedroom window to draw the curtains and welcome in the sun, in the summer I would throw the window open and declare "Good Morning World." Absorbing the beauty of the day, that it was a fresh new day, my hopes would rise that it would be a good day and I would live like today was the last day I had on this earth, in joy and happiness. I've not lost all of that, but I've lost far too much. Perhaps it's just the way things expand, when hopes are dashed to the ground and knowledge of the horror of this world grows, how the rejection of this world seeps into the soul. Well, it is true that this world has never really had me, however much it tries, it doesn't have a chance, the world doesn't understand me because I don't want this world, I want the one to come, and this world hates me and so I struggle to love it. The more I have love for this world the more my heart is broken, and the more I turn to Jesus the more that heartbreak is healed, because this world and every single person in it, truly does reside in His hands.

Now that's enough for the middle of the night, I must get back to the best laid plans of mice and men that fill my head and maybe eventually sleep and hopefully in the mornings to come awake with a bounce.

God's voice

There are times when I have heard God's voice so clearly that I wonder how I can ignore the command of my saviour. Yet somehow... by some means I manage to forget it. I remember when I was about 16 and I felt so disconnected from God, I knew that I'd felt His presence and love in my life over and again more powerfully than I could have imagined, He's showed me things that blew my mind, things that stunned and shocked me and made me love Him even more, yet here I was feeling like I was the otherside of an ocean. It was during a band practice. I had my 'cello in my arms and all I wanted to do was sit there and cry a flood of tears, I was trying to play and knowing that I couldn't, because right at that moment my playing needed to be worship and I didn't know how at that moment, ever note sounded wrong, my fingers couldn't find their places and the notes sounded so discordant, I was surrounded by musicians who were glorifying God at that moment. I dropped out, I stopped playing, because I didn't know what else to do save sound profane. I started to pray in my heart, I started screaming out to God in the pain I was in, 'how can I do this? how can I face tomorrow? why do I have to walk down the street and have rubbish and rocks hit me? why do I have to go back to that place where I have to wrestle guys twice my strength to just get my pen back from their hands just so I can do my work? where I have to be very aware of what's going on so I can duck before a chair hits my head?' and I was sat there screaming WHY! I needed strength, more strength than I could ever have on my own. Sometimes I had borrowed that strength from the sixthformers, my sisters friends, our matron, but human strength was not enough to face tomorrow, it never could have been.

So there I was, and the guys playing and C's singing filled my ears, and surrounded by that sounds of praise to heaven God entered in, He was right there with me, and I knew in that moment of beautiful clarity that I could face tomorrow, infact I could through it, in joy, because He gave me strength, strength that I could never have imagined. My fingers clasped around my bow again and the notes came, like a crashing wave, I have no idea what I played, but it came into the song with joy and love and adoration, praise to God for filling me at that moment with strength that was unimaginable.

Now I'm sitting here, and I know that some of that borrowed strength died and it grieves my heart, yet I realise, that I live today because God entered in. I survived the yesterday, remarkably, because Jesus Christ saved my life in many many ways. So I look around and I think - He's given me things to do, some really aren't ready yet, but I've chosen my essay topic for next semester already because He spoke to me about all this stuff I own, and He told me really clearly to give it up, not emotional or spiritually (though that does come into play in some cases), but literally, physically. I think when it comes past being able to count how many times He's said 'do this' I think maybe... I should have done it already.

Pax, χαριϲ, Liebe.

Remembering Greece

I was just reminded of the beauty of Greece.

I've just been washing my hair, and when I wash my hair I take my ring of my finger, it's a double ring, one hand clasping another, and the hands are separate, it would snag in my hair if I kept it on, it's the only time I take it off. As I put the ring back onto my finger I just thought about how it all happened, when I truly said - God you are my everything, and no one else is ever going to have me, as the Misty Edwards song said "I say goodbye to my mother, my father, to every other love and I press on" whenever I hear those words I feel like I'm being reclaimed by God.

I don't remember all of my trip to Greece, I remember some of the grief that I took from my class, but mostly I remember the sheer beauty of standing watching the sun rays shine down over Delphi and Mycenae, the snow at Epidavrous (how perilous is walking across marble in snow!!) standing in the altis at Olympia and understanding how at these places the beauty of God's creation shines so brightly that there was no doubt that they gods were present. I've walked down the main road in Corinth, and imagined the buzz of the market and people who would have been around. I have knelt in the chapel at Ὅσιος Λουκᾶς (Holy Luke) in Boetia, and been provided for by the almighty in the Agora of Athens.

During that trip I was so overwhelmed that I bought a ring, a ring on which I made a covenant with God, that I would be His, and remain faithful, that nothing would ever stop me from worshipping Him, that I would be in his service into eternity and I would do what he asks of me. This ring was a beautiful but flimsy thing, and when it broke almost three years later, I bought a new ring, I saw this ring, clasping hands, and I knew that if I took that ring and wore it, how much it would symbolise God hanging on to me. Just like He was that day I almost fainted in the middle of the Agora, just like He was when I said 'enough of this' and the anxiety and depression left me completely (after 4 hours of prayer that stripped away everything) and for the first time in almost 14 years I felt complete unadulterated joy.

There are not three ages of God as Joachim of Fiore suggested, indeed revelation of God ended with Jesus Christ, there is no more revelation, but what there is, is God reminding us, through inspiration and dreams and visions of who we are made to be, who He has called us to be and how we need to do that. I have seen a church united, and I will not stop until I have seen this dream come into being.

Exams

Right now I'm headed toward my exams, the first ones of third year, the first ones that count toward my degree, the first exams for a long time that I really want to do well in.

I'm remarkably calm considering. Last week I felt incredibly stressed, but that stress had nothing to do with exams. Trying not to re-live horrific moments in your life can be hard work, especially when part of you wants to. Sweetness in memories that tasted bitter. I spent about three or four days in this daze, my heart and my head had no idea what they were saying to each other and something inside of me was screaming in tears. I wanted to shout at someone, but there is no one around here who deserves that anger, I found myself just yelling at God, or rather, trying not to yell at God, and knowing that I could not take it on my own shoulders... what over time I've laid on my own shoulders is quite amazing. When after trying moment after moment to help my friends and they turn away from my advice then I blame myself, that's not right, I am not responsible for things out of my control, it would be like trying to blame myself for what happened in Haiti last week... somehow I doubt that had anything to do with me! Though my heart does break for those people, and I trust that right now God is there.

I started reading the Fellowship of the Ring again, it was so long ago that I don't actually remember any of it, there is one problem with what it's doing to me, it's making me want to right, my imagination is playing with the back story for Killan, it's time to write it, but I need to try to resist until next week. Maybe a little bit of it needs to be written down, especially as I've changed Henrietta's name again.... she just doesn't really fit any of her names, poor girl. Maybe Elanayia Helenayia, Elanetta Helenetta, those seems nice. The ray of sun smothered by the darkness of the wanderer, that is who she is, she is beautiful as the princess of Sparta ever could have been, and her betrayal of her homeland more terrible than that.

Since I started writing this I have gone off on more than one tangent. I am so glad that yesterday things got so much better. My heart feels a lot less broken! I was on the verge of driving myself insane, and am very glad that I didn't!

Now as I have a four hour exam in 45 hours I should get on with some revision, Augustine, The Cappadocians, Thomas Aquinas, Joachim of Fiore, Hobbes, Sherlock, Milton, Hegel, Moltmann and Von Balthasar, that's only 1500 years of Trinitarian Theology.