i hold my treasures
the things i long to embrace most tightly
in o p e n hands.
tenacious faith
trembling courage
fear unparalleled
knowing that if i tighten my grip...
something precious crumbles and s
l
i
p
s like sand
between my fingers
forever beyond my grasp
dead in the dust.
i hold my treasures
in open hands
hoping
the capricious wind will not snatch them away.
hoping
those i treasure won't j u
m p headlong
from my hands
vanish into the d i s t a n c e.
praying
that the Giver will
graciously allow me
to cherish them
until time's heart is still
silent
cold.
i hold His gifts
(my treasures)
as He holds
me....
....in o p e n hands.
© 1998
ARMAGEDDON'S AFTERMATH/HAND TO THE PLOW
I (3 pm Wednesday)
The world ended this morning. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. It was
more like...a sigh....Shallow breath in...shallow breath out...shallow
bre-...
And that was all.
II (5:30 pm Wednesday)
My father died the same way he lived...most profoundly alone. No
misty-eyed wife held his hand. There were no flowers or get well cards to
grace his room. No angelic choirs sang...only the banshee wail of the
flatlining monitor to proclaim an end to grace and the commencement of
judgment.
III (7 pm Wednesday)
The air is oppressively hot and tastes of poison. The wind blusters
fitfully, sorting the living from the dead. (The dead leaves are the
showy ones, riding down from the trees on unseen horses.) The sky to the
north, up against Echo Mountain, Mount Wilson, and the rest of the San
Gabriels, is gunmetal grey and steely blue. Thunder and lightning, but
only sparse, grudging, pinpoint raindrops...not enough to dampen the dust,
let alone nurture the chaparral woodland. Like a promise broken.
IV (midnight Wednesday/Thursday)
No angels dance. No Homegoing celebration. No bittersweet
reminiscences,teary smiles shared between the bereaved. His son is glad
he's gone. His widow sleeps dry-eyed and peacefully. And me??? My heart is
like the weather. Will no one mourn this death but me??
V (1 pm Thursday)
We discussed what to do by way of funeral/memorial...In the end, I think
we did what he would have wanted done. A simple cremation. No service. No
preacher who's never even met him dribbling an insincere monologue of
untruths and platitudes before a dispassionate audience of walls and
chairs...No teary eulogies. (What could we say?) We'll put the ashes in the
large grey beer stein he bought when he was in Germany. It's what he
would have wanted...the way he spent his life....
VI (4:30 pm Thursday)
We started the herculean task of sorting out his room (a dark and grimy
place)...carpet long ago deteriorated into scraps and dust, the stained
concrete floor is more than half uncarpeted, the windows have been broken
out and subsequently boarded up, the paint, once Navajo White, has greyed
into smudgy brown/yellow/grey draped with cobwebs the size of
trawler nets...Far worse than my infamous banana boxes...(he never threw
anything out...or so my mom says)...sixty six years of mostly...towering
piles of outdated and/or worn out clothing and items in varying states of
disrepair...a large drawerful of pornography....lots of pills and medicine
bottles...(and outside, three semi-running vehicles of dubious title...his
mostly successful effort to circumvent laws regarding drunk
driving) endless stacks of meaningless papers and, naturally, that sleazy
picture of Annabelle...
VII (8 pm Thursday)
His life was a libation, poured out one day, one whiskeyglass, at a time
to the god-in-the-bottle...My dad's bottle is empty now...I wonder, is his
god's bottle somehow any fuller? Is anyone's bottle any fuller? The facts,
the brutal facts, in ugly short synopsis form...He loved horseracing,
whiskey, pornography, and shooting pool. He was a perpetual
adulterer who spent his wife's paychecks, rather than earn his own
living. He abused his children. He had nothing but contempt for
God....He spent his last day (before going into the hospital) at the
bar...drinking, laughing, dying...indulging himself in the arrogance of
Belshazzar...pouring out the dregs of that last libation...the bottle
drained dry.
VIII (10:30 pm Thursday)
I'd like to think that he finally saw the Cross, walked through the
Blood, knelt contritely at the altar of forgiveness. I'd like to think
that all my prayers, all my words were more than futility. I'd like to
think that when MY world ends and I step from time into eternity...he'd be
there to welcome me. That I could see him at last the way he never was in
life...that he could finally be everything God intended for him to be.
Whole. Spotless. Unburdened. Unfettered....But if we really believe our
own gospel, I am given no such comfort. That ruthless 'kletos'/'eklektos'
dichotomy lays waste to my dog-eared hope for him. The same truth that
assures me of my future leaves me no peace regarding
his future.
IX (11:30 pm Thursday)
I wasn't there when he died. No one was. The way he wanted it. (I only have
fragments of history here...Apparently, he had been diagnosed with liver
cancer and cirrhosis more than a year ago. He never told anyone. My mom
and brother assumed that any doctor visits/medication were for a skin
cancer that had developed several years ago and/or a foot/knee injury
incurred years ago at the racetrack...He was not trying to fight the
disease...only the pain...whether this was some sort of suicide or it was
just too late to try anything, I don't know. But, my mom thought he looked
ill Sunday. Monday night he left the bar and went straight to the
hospital. Tuesday his kidneys failed and he lost consciousness. Wednesday
morning (first I heard of any of this) he died.) Alone. No one can know
what transpires in the mind of the comatose. No one can know if he finally
found his Saviour in those last apocryphal minutes, while he lay losing
his life.
X (1:15 am Friday)
The sky is that sort of lilac-grey of nighttime overcast. Rain, finally.
Not a lot; not enough to make mud of the dust, but enough to make the air
smell newborn, enough to make dry leaves green again. The raindrops are
whispering. The pavement is sparkling wet...I kick my shoes off and walk
in the delicious cool wetness. Infant wildflowers sprout in the cracks,
lifting cotyledons like leafy green arms towards Heaven....Not every
promise is broken....
...And that's as far as I can go, being organized and 'entertaining'
about this latest thing that has come up so suddenly and yet has always
been there...the rest is like a loosely covered box of cobras and
mongooses.
I find myself so overwhelmed with this loss....what loss?...how can you
lose something you never had?...It's not at all comparable to losing my
grandmother...or, should it come to that, Larry. These are temporary
goodbyes...just a matter of time until we meet on the other side of
time...Guess I had always hoped that Heaven would be that place where he
would at last be free of all his wounds and weaknesses, where he would at
last be able to love my mom, my brother, me....even if he could never
be strong enough to overcome his limitations in this life...but that
last hope died Wednesday morning...all that is left to me, my dad's only
legacy to me is that mocking empty space in Heaven, the face that won't be
there to welcome me...or his grandkids...EVER...no matter how hard I
pray....
I found a few polaroids hidden away in a drawer in his room. Most of
them are just some of his bar-pals, some are of a stripper at some party
at the bar, three of them are of Annabelle (two of the three show her
barely clothed) and the ones of(presumably) her mother...these are
entirely indescribable...well okay, highly describable...but I'll spare
you. It suffices to say that they are the ones I quickly hustled out of
view and spirited away so that my mom will NEVER have to look at
them...(they are spectral images that haunt my mind at
most...well...inopportune...moments...)
...And I am impacted (all over again, only worse) with the enormity of the
waste...I've tried so hard to find some redeeming value, something I
can use to honor his memory, but the closer I look, the uglier the
picture seems. His was a life apparently devoid of meaning, a travesty. A
tragedy because it didn't have to be this way. Far worse than burying that
one (or more) talent, he ground it to dust and threw it to the wind.
The only lasting things he left behind are the wounds he inflicted...
To all those raging WHY??!!?!!'s that threaten to shred my heart in
their search for meaning, I can only say that I have no answers. I only
know this: God is still God. His Words are Life and Truth...and He says
that He is Love, that He causes ALL things to work together for the
good...In the end, all I can do is to leave my dad and his fate in the
only Hands I can trust, and go on. His call to me is to go forward,
leaving all that is behind me in His care. Even if there are tears still
wet on my cheeks, my hand is on the plow.
© 1998
The Violence That Heals
Healings..No two are exactly
the same...either in Biblical accounts or in my own experience. Some of
them seem relatively easy to acquire. The paralytic had only to stay on
his mat while others (like corporeal intercessors) dug through the ceiling
to reach the Healer. The beggar by the gate Beautiful wasn't even seeking
healing...only spare change. Most of them do seem to require some sort of
effort(act of faith), though. Naaman had to forsake
his pride and bathe in the 'filthy' Jordan. The woman who touched the hem
of His robe had to fight her way through the crowd...
Ah, but we are stiff-necked people, are we not? It seems we are born and
bred to struggle, to fight, to violently take the Kingdom AND,
sometimes, our healing by force. A Canaanite woman had to dare to
contend with Jesus to get healing for her daughter. Jacob wrestled with
God to obtain his blessing....
I do not know what Jesus' childhood was like...but I imagine Mary
playing piggies with His little toes (or maybe lambies...gotta stay
kosher, y'know ) kissing His skinned Knees, teaching Him how to
ride a donkey....or Joseph taking Him fishing in the Galilee, digging
splinters out of His Fingers, saying bedtime prayers with Him..(imagine,
if you will, the Boy across the Seder table from His dad asking the
traditional question, 'Why is this night different from all other
nights?' Could Joseph possibly have known his traditional response was
living prophecy in the very act of fulfillment??)
Enough tangential reverie for now. It suffices to say that His parents
probably loved Him the way we love our children. In any case, in Gospel
accounts He shows none of the fears, insecurities, and self-doubts that
are the trademark of an abused child.
Might have been a whole different gospel if He had spent His life hiding
in shadows, staring at people through wary eyes, if He'd had no
disciples because He was afraid to look them in the eye, to talk with
them, if He'd had no time for lunch with Zaccheus, no crumbs for the
Canaanite woman...
Certainly, one might argue that, since He was 'tempted in every way,' He
must have had fears and insecurities to deal with. If this is the case,
then the evidence suggests that He not only wrestled with them...He
overcame them completely....
Whether having the latenight heart-to-heart with Nicodemus, sharing the
secrets of the Kingdom with the twelve, dazzling the crowds with His
parables, or confounding the pharisees and doctors of the Law...He seems
at ease and gracious with people...He went to parties. He went out for
dinner. He visited with Mary and Martha. Even invited Himself over to
Zaccheus' house. He played with children. He made horrid Greek (and
probably Aramaic, too) puns...and I'll bet He laughed at jokes, gave
gifts, and hugged people often.
If He is our example, if we are to put on Christ, if we are to be
conformed to His image...then this is what I must aspire to. This is
what I must become...Loving others is not an option. It's a commandment.
Thus, we need to be willing to do whatever it takes...have the attitude of
acceptance, the yielded heart of the beggar...might have to dig through
the roof...might have to humble ourselves and bathe in the muddy
Jordan...might even have to wrestle God Himself to the ground...to
possess, to lay hold of the healing He has for us...to become like Him.
© 1998
write to the author:Lauren Hileman
