Adonai

O, what am I but a young fool who knows naught

Who collects metaphors and fancies like baubles on a string

And drops them into my little jar of madness

To stir around.

The clinking echoes my tarnished heart, blackened by

Years of telling myself it's all wrong

And full of suffering.

But what suffering? Can one who knows barely a speck of the human condition truly grasp it? Why then does my mind tell me I've experienced everything and yet nothing at all?

This, too, is hevel. I cannot remember a time before.

All my weaknesses are my greatest strengths, if only in my imagination. I am not my own; I am bought with a price. Why then should I return to slavery?

If two or more are gathered in your name, there you will be. What is your name, again? I've forgotten. Lord forgive me, I've forgotten.

In your house there are many rooms. I'd give up mine for someone more deserving, but you would just build me another. It's brighter than anything I've seen.

You knew, and you still came. In humility, in selflessness, in strength. In everything I'm not. You brought the light and they came like moths to a flame. Blinded by you, but made to see. Crushed by your holiness, but lifted into your arms. Gently and firmly reminded that they mattered, they were important. Beloved.

Every day I walk past you, and every day I ignore you. I deserve the eternal fire, goat that I am. A wretch among those clothed in white. Who am I, that you could love me? How, after I've become worse than before? When my soul screams in anguish, burns without you there, but I crawl deeper into my cave and berate my aching head?

It's a bitter, deep mystery. Bitter as the scroll in John's stomach, deep as the grief of Ramah. It's bloody and uncomfortable and stained with tears, and it's mine. For free. It's love beyond guilt, beyond lies, beyond life itself. It is life itself. It saves me, you save me. I will never understand why, and I'll never stop asking why, but I've come to accept those facts, and the fact that it won't change.