A Weeping Heart at River's Edge

We're not questioning God. 
Just those he chose to carry on His cross.
We're no better, you'll see.
Just all of us, the lost causes.
-"Fin," Anberlin

I came across a scribbled journal entry I wrote in bleeding black ink ...

Please! Just give up on us all, all of us.

Are there any left who haven’t betrayed you?

All of us have kissed the enemies of God.

Am I, indeed, the standard bearer?

If so, I’m scared.

Scared I won’t be able to see what you see in me.

We have so much work to be done, you and I.

Where do we even begin? Which lost cause do we approach first?

Please, don’t use us. Just help us.

Pitiable, miserable, wretched, blind, poor, naked, helpless.

My heart knows we were destined for more than this.

How can you let this travesty continue?

I am hurt. This hurts me. You hurt me.

Please hurt me. I have killed you. Why do you love this?

My eyes brim with tears as I write this.

Please show yourself to me.

Please put a face to this love that extends to those who are least deserving.

What is this? Why am I afraid to believe a love like this exists?

Stop! How can you give value to the rejected? Worth to the vile? Acceptance to the putrid? Is there no system of merit?

Oh, I love you. I don’t care about anything else.

I don’t care about her, about me, about them.

Your touch is what I need. But there are others who need it more.

If you have called me to help you fix all of this, all is hopeless.

I’m tired. My emotions have broken…like an overused toy. Like a marionette on a string.

I’m no superman…just another lost cause with a heart for the other ones.

Please appear. Please show yourself to me. I want to stay up with you till the sun comes up.

Sometimes it feels like you and I are all that exist. I love you, Jesus.

I’m just so scared.

I’m just trembling because I doubt we’ll ever be what you had in mind. What if what you intended never comes to pass?

Doubter! You’re a doubter. Why can’t you just believe?! Have I not shown you enough? When will you trust me? I love you.

The thick smell of cigarette smoke.

My notebook stuck to a puddle of foul beer.

A short-skirted father’s daughter selling her soul to the night.

How can you allow this to go on?

Is it possible for a soul to live and breathe but never truly take the first breath?

May the wombs of the young would-be mothers be shut up! May a man abstain from his wife! Please don’t damn any more souls to this place.

A life on earth…something I never would have asked for, but now addicted, can never give up voluntarily.

We wallow in vomit all our lives.

It’s sick. The devil is sick.

You sick, filthy bastard. What a tragedy you are. Denied lordship and a fatherhood…by the Creator of all things. I cry for you.

God, should I cry for satan? What a tragedy! Why am I afforded repentance when this mockery of a creature exists? How similar we are to this creature we are told to overcome! Please deliver us. I want to be like you.

I want to make the devil leave you alone. Stop making my friend destroy his dreams! Leave my friend’s body alone! Stop inflating the bubble which will surely pop! Leave the one I love alone…leave that mind alone.

Rise up, oh God! Defeat this fiend! Please restore light. Pure light.

This life is so tragic…it’s beautiful. When anything good happens, it seems out of place.

This is what produces “tears of joy.” We are not really happy. We are saddened that we are being mocked. Hope laughs at us. A fake of glimmer of hope in a hopeless world gives us a few seconds to believe beauty exists. And then the darkness returns.

What would this world be like if I were gone? Would anyone even care? Would the funeral tears be fabricated?

Would I care if you died? No. I am selfish, like you. I cannot love. I need space to love in. This world is too undeserving of love.

Why must two lovers have ever met? They will only break each other’s heart.

Why must a song ever be sung? It will be misunderstood by the hearer.

Why must a cross have ever been carried? It will only be spat upon by the ignorant.

I’m scared we don’t know what we got ourselves into.

Looks like carrying the cross is a little more agony, and a little less satisfaction.

If I do pleasant things, my pleasure adds no benefit to those I love.

If I do things to benefit those I love, I myself will have no pleasure.

Looks like the kingdom come requires the death of a dream.

Sure looks a lot like the crucifixion of the flesh is a lot more pain and a lot less glory.

Looks a lot like the broken cry in vain tonight---for who hears them?

Please bottle up our tears and remember us. We are so frail. How you must laugh at our wild and independent spirit! For you created it. And it resembles you.

Please, girl, don’t yell. He didn’t mean anything. Neither did you. Just be quiet, both of you. Just be still. Let the silence breathe.

Are there lips that could kiss away the shame and the apathy? Holy Spirit, come.

I’ll never forget that night, my friend. Silence and madness dropped from your lips like a gavel. I wanted to hurt you and heal you and help you and crush you so much. But I just loved you. No, you didn’t let me down. I let you down. How could you have stopped what you were bound to do? Did God let you down? Why did you turn away? You hurt me. When you leapt off the slopes to be dashed to pieces on those rocks below, you killed me. I should have been in your place.

Oh! Where is your way? We are responsible, but how do we overcome this world. Is there nothing left?

Let the bells toll for us, the soon and future dead.

What does it profit me if I gain my own soul but lose the whole world to ruin? The souls that I ruin.

Sometimes I can’t relate to them. How can I relate to them? I have received so much more truth and goodness, and yet I am barely able to help. Advice like poison issues from my misbegotten mouth.

Can any of you souls tell me it was worth hearing me out?

Tell you what…next time tell me you don’t care what I have to say. Don’t be responsible for the ill-advised counsel I could give.

Have pity on us.

Oh, God.

I love you. I worship you.

I adore you.

How great…

I’m cold. Twenty and death knocks at the door. I am altogether too aware of my impermanence.

Kiss me. Your love is better than life. Please show me your wounds.

Hands and feet that are dripping with mercy. Romance me oh pierced Savior. Pierce me oh all-seeing one. See the desire you put there for yourself.

Please don’t give up on us.

Don’t give up hope. We gave up. But you can’t.

Anberlin @ House of Blues New Orleans 3.26.07

Setlist went something like this:

A Whisper & a Clamor

Never Take Friendship Personal

Hello Alone

Readyfuels

Adelaide

A Day Late

The Unwinding Cable Car

A Heavy Hearted Work of Staggering Genius (interlude: recording)

Dance, Dance Christa Paffgen

Paperthin Hymn

Dismantle.Repair.

Godspeed

Fin (encore)

I was disappointed they missed off 4 songs from their latest album Cities. But it's good they are avoiding the pitfall of many other bands: not playing enough old (and respected) material. Out of the newest songs off Cities, "Hello Alone" and "Dismantle.Repair." are the best "live." "Dismantle.Repair" was raw energy and emotion, just simply stunning in a live performance. It is still barely beat out by the epic "Dance, Dance Christa Paffgen," my favorite song of all time and the best Anberlin song in their live show. It was nice to have some acoustic guitar on two different songs this time, and the show was much better than the last 2 Anby shows I went to, as they headlined and had the whole stage to themselves for an hour and a half. This is my third time seeing this band "live" and they are still my favorite. The musicianship, the lyrics...and Stephen Christian's man-angel vocals.

A Photograph of the Hand Mentioned in the Previous Post

Camping

The Chi Alpha guys had a great time camping in Percy Quin State Park near McComb, Mississippi this weekend! It had been about 2 and a 1/2 years since I'd been camping. Sleeping out under the stars Saturday night was brilliant. Also, God's presence was so strong. The times we men had seeking God around that campfire...they shall never be forgotten.

Also, as you may have heard it already rumored, I had a little accident this weekend. JC, Josh, and I took turns climbing up the side of a dam. I made it up the highest, but I also paid the most sliding down. When I hit the pool of water below, my right hand caught a jagged pipe and sliced my palm open through several layers of subcutaneous fat in my hand, about 3 inches long. I had to go get 14 stitches put in my hand, which followed the tetanus shot in my arm and 10 mini-shots in my hand to numb the pain. As of this morning, I was still cleaning out dried blood from underneath my fingernails. Much thanks to Josh Harvey for donating his Brute Squad shirt to stop the bleeding!

Business Majors Unite!

I spent my entire day in the Center for Engineering and Business Administration (CEBA) yesterday. My schedule went like this:

7:20 a.m. Wake-up
8:00-10:30 Work in Dept. of ISDS
10:30-1:30 Class
1:30-3:00 Lunch and Break
3:00-4:30 Class
4:30-5:00 Studying internal audit
5:00-6:00 Beta Alpha Psi community service project
6:00-7:30 Beta Alpha Psi meeting
7:30-9:30 Work on group AIS project
9:30-11:00 p.m. Chi Alpha's The Gathering
11:00 p.m.-3:00 a.m. Visit with friends

James and I are packing up, we're leaving to go camping on an XA guys' camping trip near McComb, Mississippi at Percy Quin State Park tonight.

Stories

Last night was one of those nights where bed is the next logical step not because you are tired of a day's work, but because you are weary of the world and its sorrows. At 1:00 a.m., sleep was the last thing on my mind. My truck is always glad to bear my desperate prayers, always willing to contain joyous and private conversations of lovers, always glad to travel with me to a lonely place when no one else will. It bore me to River Road, where beneath the noisy flutter of flags in the wind, my pen wrote eight angry and confused pages of desperation. I was not mad at the sorrow and madness that had dripped from the lips of a friend; I was hurt for us all. I became the chief of lost causes, unable to hardly even build the Kingdom myself, much less raise the dead. What he confessed was not just his own sin, but the failure of the glorious ones to bear the cross in a loveless world.

But this is no surprise to me. The larger tragicomedy of history reminded me of this. Walking home I wanted to plunge every failure of us all into the lake. And then I looked up at a weathering building and remembered a friend. I smiled; what a chapter in her life this was! One forlorn friend, another rejoicing in the midst of pain. I knew their stories. I knew the one was fast asleep, dreaming blissfully, and the other was no doubt like me, bearing the weight of the night.

But then I remembered the Story, and its Author. Each human being is a story, a novel. Fantasy, tragedy, comedy, fiction, reality, sorrow, hatred, love, apathy, heroism, romance, godliness, murder, drunkenness, glory, myth, misfortune, sex, ambition, heaven, hell, family, unrequited love, lies, mystery, absurdity, humor, monochromaticism, drama, anger, death, joy, insanity, adventure. If any of us were to judge the entire person by one chapter in his or her life, what a flawed impression we should have not only of the central conflict to that life, but also of the conflict's resolution! So we all take turns in different settings in different conflicts living out these stories. Sometimes we don't know the full story because the characters in our story, well. We do not care to know who they are, the minor characters. They only add humour to our stories. Just a kid down the hall with long hair and a goatee. Just a wild man I don't know yelling playful insults at me to impress a girl he is flirting with. Just a bright-hearted homeless guitarist playing for money on the sidewalk at night.

But ultimately, just like in the great Greek myths, all are important, all interact, all have a part to play in the Largest of stories. Not every god or goddess, hero or heroine existed in every myth; but almost all existed in at at least two myths. Perhaps Daedalus should be in 173 myths. But no one cares to know about his significant interactions with other major events of the Mythological World. No one wants to know the other chapters that were so important to his story. Only, "What's your contribution to the Story?" And so we know him as a father with wax wings who escapted from a labyrinth.

The maxim, "Don't judge a book by its cover" is not less true than, but definitely less important than another potential maxim, "Don't judge a story by its chapter." The chapter of your friend's life may be sad and terrible right now; hear the story out. Maybe bright and cheery? Do not be deceived. While in this world, another chapter of sorrow will come. As a walking story, do not give up out of comfort or sorrow. Don't fall asleep. You have many twists and turns yet to go. Don't judge the final outcome based on this chapter. Let the confident beware and the hopeless laugh.

It looks a lot like carrying the cross is a lot more agony and a lot less glory.