Night Swings

I wonder if I could see statistics on how often my opinions, arguments, thoughts, and beliefs were wrong, how humble would I be? And then, if I could walk the paths each person tread to reach the present and see their trails not only in passing, but in their entirety, how ashamed would I find myself of my own response to tiny, trivial things?

The plank itches today, it’s heavy. Every time I try sawing it out, I quit because I’m getting sawdust in my mouth. One thing I’ve realized about my life is that tomorrow is never the time for fixing myself – it must happen now and always. It’s so easy to enter into the mindset of: “when I have free time after this x” or “after I finish y, I’ll focus on myself”. Maybe in some instances, that is plausible, but when it comes to spirituality, the time must be now.

I’m like a lump of clay in the kiln, and every moment I stay in the inferno, I’m less malleable, more resistant to change. That would be fine, except I’m unfinished. A finished piece is ready for the bisque, the wood fire, the salt kilns, but I’m riddled with flaws still.

But today I realized life is moving, consistently and fully. Right now I feel about to an irrevocable fate, and its overwhelming gravitas keeps me on my knees. I’m an unbalanced equation, still prodded by the pencil of uncertainty, and things are subtracted from my being, added, multiplied and divided out from under me. I’ve got no feet to stand on, some days, but I’m almost certainly being carried.

Like Abraham climbing the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, I see only pain in exchange for faith, but I keep praying the faith will stand – perhaps God provides a ram. But there is still a sacrifice; there is always a sacrifice, the ugly necessity of our disobedience.

And swinging in the park after dark I’m singing with the air brushing past me. I am like this swing, these days, the false force of centrifuge, the faux wind brushing the moisture from my cheeks, the pendulaic rhythm, and the pretend motion that carries me nowhere – that’s what I am. But even so, I’m a smile of geometry, and there is laughter in the squeaking of chain links, even if they are only existential.