Wounds
Wounds…
When did funerals become parties, fake lives
celebrated, and deaths not mourned? Have we become so giddy with our times that we now exclude any discourse regarding the rewards and power of suffering? The need for regrets? The divine nature of sin? Or how about hell?
Have we become so thoroughly secularized that we automatically assume — to paraphrase Patti Smith — that if Jesus died for anyone’s since, they weren’t ours?
Make no mistake about it: I’m a sinner. And I hope that this Lent I can redeem myself, at least a little bit, in the eyes of God. Like so many of us, I often think and physically feel that I am painfully paying for my sins by merely living as I do. Purgatory via a thousand tiny cuts. For me, personally, with every bird or other animal I see dead, or experience firsthand dying or suffering…a small part of my soul is lost. I’m convinced of that.
Socrates once suggested that an unexamined life was not worth living. But if we are dying every day, mustn’t we also question the readiness of our souls? Shouldn’t we be wondering how prepared we are to pass through Heaven’s Gate, particularly if we heed Christ’s words about the narrowness of the pathway there?
I’m convinced that no matter how good we like to think or believe we are — how Christ-like we’ve managed to pattern our lives — when our embalmed self is lying face up in the casket of our choice, we will be begging for prayers, not accolades. Because we will have honestly tallied those instances that jeopardized our souls. And we will sense how the Grandest of Inquisitors has judged us, finding our presumed best lacking.
Aren’t we all, then, the walking wounded? Zombies of a different sort? Our confessions but mere maggots on sores that never truly heal. Not in a century or more that reads as if Lucifer has been given free reign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGR4SFOimlk
Two abortions. Two murders. On my conscience. The first was thoughtless. Never second-guessed what my girlfriend at the time and I assumed was the best for both of us. For the “fetus.” The best option. The best choice. The beautiful thing about Roe — as far as men are concerned — is that it lets us off the hook. The ultimate responsibility falls on the woman for the killing. We can only be accomplices to the crime. To the murder. And while at the time I never sought comfort in that, I can’t claim that I didn’t later. Because when I truly bothered to look into the eyes of whom would have been the mother of our child, I saw nothing but regret. But acknowledging such a thing would have also called my conscience into question. Should I have done — could I have done — anything to change her mind, without making her decision even more difficult to bare?
The same questions arose the second time. But again were never posed. Because this time I pushed against what had already been decided. I begged for her to adopt out the baby. My conscience screamed, demanding to be heard. For by now I had begun sorting out the so-called big questions. There was no longer any ambivalence regarding the morality of abortion. No gray area. No shading of equivocation. It was wrong. But I also felt that the more I pushed on her, the worst she felt. Not about her decision — which she was firmly committed to — but about me. What kind of man was I to “force” my “point of view” on her? She had a right to do what I believed was wrong. And she did.
The worst part of this second case was how little we ever said to each other about it. Fifteen years of marriage. Maybe neither of us wanted to make the other feel bad. Quite the trade-off. I probably never gave that horrible day as much thought as I needed to. I’m certain that I didn’t pray enough about it. And I never formally asked God for His forgiveness until very recently. But I do now; I do so many times a day.
So when I die, please no celebrations. No memorials. Just prayers. Prayers that beg God to forgive me for all of the other sins that I never had a chance to account for in my short stay here. Prayers that purge. So that I may indeed rest in peace with Him. Much sooner than later.
