The more violently this planet spins, and the more thickly the air hums with megaphones and car alarms, I find a strange phenomenon growing within myself. It’s a tender, irresistible pull toward rest.
It’s not a collapse from burnout; it’s not a last resort. It feels like oil spreading as I’m pressed. It feels smooth and straight. I just coast into it, no convincing. That storm siren is blaring up above, and the sky is green. But isn’t that the color of life? And doesn’t the pressure change make it strangely easy to breathe? Suddenly, I could float.
Dan walked into the studio today and asked me what I thought of today’s episode. I smile, noting the notch on history’s timeline. Not just mine, but yours and ours. It’s true that I don’t know how to compare one generation to another. I don’t have the years to carry into a room where sociologists name each generation and set it apart from the last. Is my generation faithful or faithless? Maybe I’ll never know. Something tells me I won’t live that long.
What is living, anyway? Many have gone before me, who lived when the dollar was backed and the food was honest. They mourn the world I will raise my children in. Dan bets we won’t make it to 2024. He says there’s a day approaching when we won’t be able to walk into the office for an ordinary workday. He says it with fear; I nod with excitement. Anything that seems ordinary is a mirage, anyway. “Maranatha,” I whisper.
The end of this story matters. It really does. It’s the direction we point in the present. No, we’re not getting zapped from the last great battle. What storyteller removes his characters from the climax? What is this all unto? A love that is as strong as death - and for it to be proved true.
Oh, how I long for that moment, that week of years. I sit on the edge of my seat, relaxed. The satisfaction you’ve sculpted in my heart. The way we’ve ventured to its utmost horizons, hand in hand. The terrifying glory I’ve beheld in your irises, your eye-flowers. The way it passes by me, through me, like a breath now in this coffee shop. I move slow. I smell summer. I hear melodies in the wood of the stairs. This river spills from me unkempt. Come, all who are thirsty. Won’t you drink deeply of this life, the light of men?
When a virus ensnared the world three years ago, this love became real. I could touch it. It was no longer the stuff of Sunday mornings and scholarly articles. It’s no coincidence that this was the year you ushered me into family. A love I can touch is a love that will keep. It invades my thorny places. It beats a path up the mountain. It wrestles me to the table and obliterates my enemies. I am my beloved’s, and he is mine, and neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will take him from me. He’s mine. And I get to feel the fire of how real that is, unlike any of those who went before me into the cloud of witnesses.
Your breath is hot. My steps become heavy, weighted by love. There’s a whiteboard littered with the names of drugs laced with fentanyl, and the thousands of children that are dying and being sold into sex slavery. There are voices moaning for the lost, and drawing up battle plans. I sense your gentle breeze. Come up here, you say in my ear.
I tuck into the hallway. What is it? I ask you.
I think your hair looks especially lovely.
You say it with the breath that will slay the lawless one.
I could write, I could dance, I could sing. I could train, I could lobby, I could rescue. Lately all I want to do is sit down with you. All the words and melodies bursting in my skull, and it makes me settle into this sure rest. I smile warm, my head on your chest. This is where we’re heading, toward an eternity of this closeness.
All the compassionate calamity of today and the gory glory of tomorrow. It sounds like your heartbeat.