Walking

When I get restless at night I go for walks on the track outside. I sometimes seek out company for these excursions, but as the semester has progressed I have felt increasingly the need to be alone. This is not typical of me, but I am learning to depend on it. My walks are my time with God. Some nights my walks take me up to the top of the hill, and I sit and talk to him about everything, and tell him what I think, and he responds and we have a good conversation. Those nights, I lay back against the grass and stare up at him, and he winks at me and I smile, and we just sit there thinking together. And sometimes I go to the hill to fight something out because I need his help.

Tonight I walk out to the track and choose to go right, arbitrarily. The sky is big here, yawning cavernous overhead, most of its treasures obscured by the dragon's breath (or by light pollution, whichever you prefer). Only a handful of gems pierce through, scattered across the inverted bowl of sky, but a handful is all I need, to look and trace and see him in.

I tell him a little about my day, and he listens, and I tell him about what I think, and ask his advice, and he tells me the same thing he's told me a thousand times before. I nod, like I always do, but I really think it's starting to sink in. I try to pray, but each prayer I start peters out after a few sentences. They are striving prayers, forced. My heart agrees with them but does not join in, so I stop. Tonight is just a walking night.

The track is populated. There are several pairs of joggers, girls running together for safety. Measured breathing offsets their pounding footsteps as their legs rhythmically swish past. I stay on the outer edge of the track so that I do not get in their way. I hear a voice coming from across the soccer field, a young man who talks to himself as he runs, encouraging his heart and lungs in mixed Spanish and English. He is fast, and has already passed me once, calling motivation to his muscles: the spirit is willing, but the flesh tires quickly. I am still walking.

When I walk with people I walk fast. Part of me dislikes being in the middle of a pack, part of me is afraid I will be left behind, part of me just likes to be early. But when I walk alone I take my time. It's me and him anyway, and there's nothing that could really be called a destination, so all I have to do is avoid Spanglish guy. I follow the paved path, hearing the subdued noises of my jeans and flip-flops mingle with the incessant, whispering breeze. I watch the runners on the track ahead and wonder: are they running to or away from something? Probably just aerobic points.

Tonight is a walk for no reason. Trees set patterns across the path and I flash in and out of them: light shadow light shadow light. I alternate between looking up at the stars and looking down at the path, and I am looking down when movement in a crack of asphalt catches my eye. An inchworm struggles over the crevice. He is about one-third of the way across, and I want to help him, but there are two joggers closing in behind me and I am walking on before I realize it. The joggers pass me and I retrace my steps a few yards, but I don't see the inchworm. I hope he made it.

I decide to circle the track again. Spanglish guy is about to give out. I am pulling for him. The toes on my left foot go numb as I reach the backside of the baseball stadium, and I wonder why I am still walking. The grassy creek bank rises to my right and I look out over the fog that has gathered in the creek bottom that I somehow missed my first time around, it occurs to me that the sight is probably worth numb toes. Overhead the Dipper empties itself into the swirling ether, and I tip my head back and drink deeply the elixir that is the clean, leaf-scented night air.

Once when I was a kid, the power went out in my neighborhood independent of thunderstorm, and my sister and brother and I went out and marveled at the brightness of the moon. I wish, only partly kidding, for all the power to go out here. But it doesn't, which is probably a good thing.

Footsteps crunch behind me on the gravel beside the track and my friend Caroline tosses me a greeting as she runs by. Caroline is blond and athletic and kind, and whenever I see her I smile, because she is that kind of person. I watch her run, not on the track, but beside it, over the grass in parts, and through puddles. Inspired, I too leave the track and cut across the soccer fields. This does nothing to improve the state of my toes, but after a brief consultation my toes and I decide that cold dewy grass is worth it.

I pause in the middle of the field and want very much to say something, but nothing comes to mind. I think he heard me anyway.

He and I don't talk much as I climb the hill again, taking it at a gradual slope to make it easier on my toes, but I say goodnight when I hit the sidewalk and he nods, and I know for the millionth time the peace that can be in wordlessness.

Remember Me

"Remember me," he said.

He was a convicted criminal whose words came from the pinnacle of the Roman law machine-- the cross. His life was ending. His lungs were filling with blood and his bones were cracking with the dead weight of his body.

"Remember me."

Two words echoing the cry of insignificant humanity. We all ache to matter. We need to know we occur to someone. We require an assurance that we will last beyond our physical existence. He was a thief, one who spent his time trying to hide, to be unseen. Yet at the threshold of death he knew the need to be thought of.

He spoke to the man beside him. The pain of scourging had been superimposed on the pain of crucifixion so that it was all he could do to breathe. He had been so pushed beyond the limits of physical endurance that description only mocks the enormity. He was an innocent man willingly assuming Guilt.

"Remember me when you come into your Kingdom."

The thief asked to be remembered. He asked Jesus to remember him. Somehow he knew that here, incongruous though it seemed, was the only place this question could be answered. And what good would it do to be remembered by a dead man? They were traveling together to Death. The only question was which of them would get there first. He did not ask to be remembered by the soldiers. He did not plead with the lookers-on to pass his name down to their children. He asked to be remembered in the kingdom of a corpse. What good would it do?

Jesus answered, "This day, you will be with me in Paradise."

I will not remember you, he said. I will not need to. You're coming home with me. I'm taking you home.

We fear being forgotten, but how could he forget us? How could he forget the thief beside him, when the thief nailed him in place? How can he forget us? Our sins were on his shoulders as he hung.

"Remember me," comes the silent plea. I want someone to care. I want to be on someones mind. I don't need to be powerful or famous. I just want to be significant to someone.
I do not want to be forgotten. I do not want to be left behind.

When he was on the cross, there was not one thing forgotten. The things we wish we could forget were there in force. He took them all, and they crushed him, carrying him down with them to their place of origination.

And when he left, he forgot them. But he remembered us.
"This day you will be with me in Paradise."
Today you are coming home with me, where you belong. You couldn't come before, but I took care of it.
With Him in Paradise, always remembered.

Chastisement of our Peace

I read through my stuff on here again. And thought about the stuff on xanga instead of reading it, since I'm fasting from xanga for Lent.
I didn't like what I read.
I am tired of trying to sound clever. I'm pretty sure I just come off sounding pompous and stilted.

Lent has been interesting. This is my first time observing it; that is, actually sticking with whatever I had decided to fast from. I hadn't planned on it, but on Ash Wednesday I made a spur-of- the-moment decision to join some friends of mine at a church service, at some Lutheran place halfway across town.
I wasn't sure how I liked it. The words in the program were not ambiguous, and not calculated to make one comfortable.

"He hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

I don't like reading that. I didn't like proclaiming that I was the one who made him cry in Gethsemane. I didn't like wearing a gritty smudge on my forehead, the echoed acknowledgment of "ashes to ashes" as we knelt. I don't like to be reminded of what I am.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him..."

Chastisement of our peace. What does that mean? Chastisement of our peace? The discomfort that had to be stood before our restless, endlessly tossing and turning souls could be quieted? Did it take all of that to put us to rest? Is our peace so important then?
I don't like to dwell on it. I don't like remembering my griefs and sorrows, much less so recalling that he bore the bruises of them. Why should he care about our griefs and sorrows? our peace? Wasn't taking our iniquities enough?

"...and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep are gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

All we have gone astray. Ash Wednesday we proclaim our collective stupidity. Like sheep, acknowledged as some of the stupidest creatures ever to have speaking roles in movies, we stray, and in doing so place the burden on our shepherd to take the fall for the chaos we wreak.
And he opens not his mouth.

Not a word of remonstrance. No eloquent dictum or bamboozling demagoguery. No blame. Not a word. Only a meek compliance with the letter of the law. Despised, oppressed, rejected, afflicted.

Silent.
Ash Wednesday we remember how weak we are when we are loud, and how strong he was in his silence.

I go back to campus and manage to forget about the slash on my forehead, until people start to ask questions. It's amazing, on a Christian campus, how few people knew what it was for.
"Hey, you have something on your head."
"I thought Ash Wednesday was just for Catholics and stuff."
"Um, did you fall in something?" (leading me to ponder how exactly I could fall in something that would leave nothing but a smudge in the middle of my brow...)
"No," I explain. "No, this is for Ash Wednesday. It's not for a specific denomination. It's just...just for, um, Lent. And stuff."

I don't want to say that it is to remind me of why Easter is important. I don't want to admit that I still need an Easter. I don't want to bring that up. The cross was my fault. The pain was my fault. The tears were my fault.
The pain was mine. The sorrow. The grief. The lack of peace. Mine.
He did not just take the iniquity. He took the pain. And something in me resists that, says loudly that I have no need of the smut on my face, that I have no sorrows that need taking, no iniquities to be cleansed.
It isn't true.
He knows it, too.
But he doesn't say a thing.