Grief

The worst part part about grief is the things you didn’t say and the love you felt but didn’t share.

Things don’t go on forever. There is an end. Or rather there is a dramatic change. It’s like waiting at the train station for the train that’s going to pick up your loved one and take them to the next destination. It seems like the train is delayed and you become distracted. You no longer think about your loved one leaving and the precious moments you have together there on the platform. Your life takes on a routine where you forget the leaving, you forget about the train. Then one day when you’re not looking, the train comes and your loved one gets on board, and before you realize it, it pulls away from the platform and leaves the station. You run after it for a while but then the platform ends and you can’t go further. If I’d only known. Well I did know. I’d heard plenty of times that the train is coming and we’re on a platform for a reason. If I had only kept that in mind I would’ve said everything I wanted to say. I would’ve made sure she got all the love that I had to give. The worst part of grief is having words and love left here in my heart that actually belonged to her, that she should’ve taken with her. Now there’s nothing to do with these except give them to God, call out after her send them with an angel, and hope and believe that she gets them.

I once was blind, but now I see.

Death heals my emotional vision, my spiritual vision. Now I can see Vicki. They say hindsight is 2020. Nothing like death to heal the eyes. So now I tell her everything in my heart that I wish I had said to her here on earth. Now I say all the love and feel all the love that I never said or expressed and I hope to our father in heaven that she is filled with it and in return I hope to receive the abundant forgiveness I need for falling so far short of being her lover.

She’s dancing now!

No Glory

You won’t get noticed
you won’t get introduced
you won’t get a contract
you won’t get produced
you won’t get publicized
highly prized
bribed
or fantasized
perhaps neglected
even rejected
certainly marginalized
no glory

no glory no credit
no being sought after
no light in your face
oft times no laughter
no pay for the word you sang
or recited
no visit with the president
no being beknighted

Just you all alone with a friend to say hi to
no “S” on the chest
just a daddy to cry to
No big rally making everything good no final tally to fix it like it should be no screaming voice finally getting heard,
But
justice, kindness, gentle words
caring for the little one here and there
loving on an older one with thin white hair
taking time to being small as
small as life can be
living up to the downward call servant shall you be
no glory.

The Terror of Truth

Underneath all of the business of practical living and all the distractions, are you as terrified of reality as I am?

I first saw this painting, “Study after Valaquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X” by Francis Bacon, in an art history class back in 1977. The professor told us that it represented Bacon’s belief about the terror inside all of us. The disturbing image became an indelible symbol for me of my own ultimate fear. Through the years this eternal, unsettling premonition of terror and oblivion that began with night terrors as a child and continued in my acid trips in the early 70s, has surfaced time and again in my conscious, waking thoughts without the former catalysts. I was always afraid that would happen, that the veneer of my temporal, material activity, my normal life, would wear thin and the fearful, raw reality of existence from my unconscious background become permanently exposed with all its terror. I now understand the painting vividly. I have come to realize that my childhood terrors, my elucidating drug trips and their foreboding prophesy are very real and portend a most unimaginably horrific final end. But I couldn’t always admit this. That it was true, was way too traumatic to believe, that is, until it broke through into my conscious reality in a permanent way.

It was 1992. One of my former art students and I were traveling to Bowling Green State University to visit another former student enrolled there. Somewhere along the route it happened. In an instant, the veneer dissolved and existential reality and accompanying despair was exposed. While I managed to keep my outward appearance normal, my mind was enveloped in terror. We had our visit during which I tried to share what was happening to me but the experience was and is still far beyond human words to describe. Returning home I got my friends to pray for me, a lot. I was able to resume what looked like a normal life and my art teaching position but my inner life was in constant terror. I felt completely beyond the reach of anyone, even God, knowing that my final end would be complete catatonic paranoid abandonment. But that would not be my end.

I remember clearly the beginning of my deliverance. On a walk a short distance from my house, the Holy Spirit rose up in me with fiery indignation. In my mind I turned and confronted the terrifying and fearful reality. I “looked” it fully in its face and began aggressively speaking in tongues with a very considerable sense of power. For the first time in about a year, peace returned and relief flooded my spiritually drained soul.

From that time on I have had peace concerning the existential fear. Yes, existing is scary. I think our worst fear is being alone with no companion and no guide to show us how to do this thing we call “being”. There is nothing more frightening than thinking you will have to exist forever on your own. Well, I have come to know that the God of all “being” has created conditions to alleviate this fear and has provided us with a meaningful and joyful existence. Through what I have experienced, I know that God is absolutely above all and God is more than enough to address our fear and meet our needs.