When will this be brought down?

It makes for a daily battle to be a person who is consciously paying attention. I’m not a violent person, far from it, but I’ve clinched my fist many times as of late. It’s difficult to be burdened with care. Each morning feels like I’m walking out onto the fields of war without any armor on. I wake up and am shot at before I even have time to put on my defenses. And yet my body still feels like it’s been carrying a heavy armor. My back is sore. My shoulders heavy. Stress holds a tight grip on my upper neck. My eyes burn as they stare at nothing.

It’s been a difficult year, we all know this, but those difficulties seemed to strengthen when our nation was hit with hurricanes while in the middle of a national dialogue about race. We were already increasing in our division when our President called protesting athletes “sons of bitches.” Then the powerful men began to fall; scandals of sexual misconduct buzzed up our phones. Tax bills were crafted. Internet threatened. Photos of slavery leaked. Concert and church goers massacred. Pedestrians run over. Fires destroyed homes. Public lands and sacred sites threatened. Swat Men murdered another vulnerable person. A polar bear starves. Native Americans insulted when they should be honored. Civil Rights leaders slighted. Arrests made of people who worked in putting our President in power. Nuclear War threatened. Peace efforts in the Middle East all but nullified. A child abuser endorsed by a major political party and even the President of the United States as people of faith forfeit their soul to gain the world. Immigrants threatened and millions pushed to the side. I’m angry all the time. I mourn all the time. Every single day. Multiple times a day.

It’s been difficult to find space for silence. I can barely release the grip of my phone let alone put it in my pocket or turn it off. The buzz of breaking news hums across the wooden tables of my coffee shops. I delete one app just to frantically pace back and forth through another.

My body screams that what’s happening is not something it was created to bear. And yet my brain is fixated on the problems. Troubled by the silence. Angered by the justifications. Addicted to the outrage. I want justice to rage against this evil. I think of Baldwin’s final assertion “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!” The voices I often turn to for spiritual sanctuary are angry too. How can they not be? The injustice is so pervasive. To pay attention is to be angry. To ignore is to feel guilty. To be silent is to feel complicit. Was this all Christ felt when he sweat blood before his arrest? Is this why the autopsy of Dr. King revealed that he, a 39 year old man at the time of his death, had the heart of sixty year old?

It’s such a conflict to have a body that tells me I’m not meant to carry this, and a heart that feels so determined to do so. To have a soul that sees the voids and demands that it must do SOMETHING. You find solidarity in poems: Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. And yet are burdened with feelings of screaming into silence as people you love and have trusted champion evil with excuses. I don’t mean to sound hopeless, I don’t feel hopeless, nor do I believe anyone would describe me as hopeless. But I am wounded all the same.This constant shock at the perversion of so much that I once trusted is defeating. When will this be brought down?

I constantly feel dilemma between the “Be still and know that I am God, verses of the Scriptures and the prophetic nature of others.” I’ve struggled finding my place in between trusting God with the power and trusting that he has equipped us to be the power as well. Doesn’t matter how learned I am with the scriptures, or how many pastors tell me, I struggle with wondering how much am I supposed to give to this fight and how much I’m supposed to give away? It is a spiritual battle after all. I should probably be surprised it didn’t feel like a battle for most of my life. But it does now. A battle against the very people who profess to be on my team. I miss the bliss of my ignorance.

Having faith that it will all work out and grieving your new eyes to see is such a paradox. It’s a dark night. A painful unraveling that lies you bare before whatever power holds it all. Lies you in an entirely new ignorance, a conscious ignorance, that is overwhelmed by the awareness of what it does not know. One that calls on trust more than perfect answers. It’s a different sort of trust than the blindness I once gave to a particular rendition of Jesus. He turned out to be a fraud. A tool for propaganda that wooed unsuspecting followers to align with Empire and political parties. I take my anger of this lie that once owned me out on the faceless “those” still living in it’s darkness. It’s unfair and adds more weight. A weight I’ve tried so hard to escape these last two months.