THE PRINCIPLES OF BEING AN UNTETHERED ZEALOT by @fan-art-ic
[id under cut]
THE PRINCIPLES OF BEING AN UNTETHERED ZEALOT
if you stopped telling people it's all sorted out after they're dead,
they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
I.
I grew up in a small room with white walls and grey floors,
with plastic tables where I sat, making a cross from
craft foam and a glue stick. An older lady named Mrs. K,
or Ms. Z would tell the room about a man named Jesus,
who died for our seven-year old sins of lying
—about if we brushed our teeth—
stealing
—a french fry off a plate,
and cheating
—at monopoly.
I grew up in church after church after church,
in car rides ten twenty and eighty minutes long,
told that something holy exists, and how
my mom may have cried out in pain as my head crowned,
but there was a man in the sky who created me.
I learned to recite words of punishment, the same
words that the angels spoke at gomorrah, to
earn pieces of candy and pocket-toys.
Until I was ten, I went to church.
Then the bed called louder in the early morning
hours, so I never went to Sunday school again.
For over half of my life, I was told there was something
righteous in the air, and something revenant in the water,
and if I pried open my feral child heart to let the Lord in,
I would not be damned, tortured, and abandoned to
eternal agony in death.
II.
I’m not sure exactly, of how to explain this:
I don’t believe in God, I believe in GOD in People.
I believe in the pain of kneeling before something Bigger.
I believe in how sunlight burns my skin like a cherub’s sword.
I believe in the community of Same Heart and Faith.
I believe in how hair glows like a halo under streetlights.
I believe in the ineffability and complexity of a Humanity.
Does this make sense?
Does you witness the way my heart is bruised before you?
The LORD is my SHEPHERD, I shall not want—
but I shall need and do need. I need so desperately.
I own a gaping, aching need to fill myself with
a Truth, a Truth that’s been left unfilled but created
from hours of study, hunched over silk-thin paper
and imprinting into my child mind the grief of Mary,
the faith of Abraham, and the belief of Paul.
I ask myself
—the hole asks itself—
what about the tragedy of Emmanuel?
Carpenter, friend, son, and Son? Whispered to by
a man who called Himself “Father”, who ordered
young Emmanuel to bleed and strip himself
—hanging bone-splintered above his mother and city—
humble
to save his neighbors, his heroes, his mother
and father?
I ask myself
—the hole asks itself—
what about the tragedy of Job?
Faithful, beautiful Job, ever servant to his God,
and suffered endlessly and countlessly as a test
of his belief. His children dead and friends’ backs
turned on him
—blaming words like knives under his shoulder blade—
now a man with nothing, toyed with
by his God, who already knew Job would remain to any length
in His name.
I ask myself
—the hole asks itself—
what about the tragedy of Lucifer?
God’s right-hand, most beloved as all? Wings that
glimmered and made sinless
—for sin was not yet invented—
angels shiny with awe?
Lucifer Morningstar, named so for being full of light,
bright and beautiful as the dawning sun painting
color across the brand new sky, who God designed
to have the tint of pride, to have thoughts God would
not like, and who was destined to burn from
curiosity into something dark, twisted, ashen, disturbed?
I cannot believe in God, for He would take
my belief and grasp it with both hands and
twist and yank and distort me into
another story for a seven-year old child to
be told in a room with white walls and grey floors.
III.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines religious as:
‘relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an
acknowledged ultimate reality or deity
// a religious person
// religious attitudes
2 : of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances
//joined a religious order
3a : scrupulously and conscientiously faithful
b : FERVENT, ZEALOUS’
I have faithful devotion to:
-Doodling on tests and quizzes and legal documents
-Staying up late to read yet another chapter
-Finishing shows
(unless I get bored mid-episode in which I never finish it)
-A love of cats
-Respecting my mother
-Disrespecting my father
(subtly though, I don’t want to get smacked again)
-Writing bad poetry
-Writing half-bad prose
-Ordering the same food every time
(because experience has taught me that the familiar is better)
I wouldn’t call myself [SCRUPULOUS] or
[CONSCIENTIOUS], but I will
accept, defend, and fight for
[b: FERVENT, ZEALOUS].
I am this quiet, barren thing,
dull as the metal hull of
Oppenheimer’s pride.
In my third eye I am
Powerful and
Strong and
Shiny new like the
metal glint of
a knight with
armor polished, my
sword strung at
the hip.
My child heart rests
dormant in my chest
and feral in my memories.
Memories of bashing a
head against a church floor,
of a heady violent form
taking hold of my
dirty, grubby fingers.
IV.
The LORD became God when
Man forgot to write about
how the LORD wept for his Children
on the Eighth Day.
V.
I haven’t touched the ground today.
I was too busy noticing the angels
who sat on the park bench talking
about deadlines and soul quotas.
The same cigarette touched their
not-lips and the one with muddy
shoes flicked the doggend onto
the sidewalk, grinding it into ash
with his heel.
I heard one say that love isn’t Love
—I could hear the capital in his voice—
and the other snorted, a strange trill echoing
from his inhuman fleshy throat.
“What’s the difference, then?” he asked.
“love is a service, a loan with one-hundred-and-ten
interest.”
My toes brushed the dirt and the first angel kept talking:
“Love is a selfish act mangled and chewed and torn,
it hurts worse than a Fall and is worth more than Grace.”
“I don’t get it, both sound fucking awful,” the other angel said.
“It’s called free will.”
They began a new cigarette and I
started to walk again. I think I
learned something there, in
the park, near those angels.
I think I saw the ash grey halos
and heard human things for
ethereal beings, and understood
how the wine-dark of the sea
crashes so brutally over the cliffs,
drawing artists and writers to its beat,
begging to be seen in its violent shores.
VI.
When I was twelve, I tried to touch God.
I rode in tense silence, ten minutes there,
ten minutes back, to a youth group at a big,
white church that had a parking lot so big,
I would collapse racing kids one end to the other.
I stood in the gym where other twelve-year olds
threw footballs and frisbees and free advice,
before the pastor would give God’s advice after
we all stood for five songs of worship to
God, blessing him for shelter, food, water, life,
for the absence of pain and presence of joy.
My feet ached and my baby soul hurt,
wretched from the inability to embrace
the Word of God from the mouths of
people who preached kindness and then
placed me in groups of kids during
activities, where I became a specter:
a disheveled, nail-chewing, hair
band-snapping, too-solid ghost.
I abandoned church at age sixteen.
I tried to find God in the evergreens and
mountain air and streaking skies. When
my counselor asked if everyone in the tent
believed in God, I said maybe. I wanted to
be honest and brave, knighted in Truth. What
I got was an interrogation, a smiting on
those wooded hidden paths, with commands
of faith poured down my gasping throat
and my pinched nose.
God is the name of justification, and
I could not find Him for my own Justice.
VII.
When I was a child, I was told of
a resolution, solution, dissolution
of all worries, fears, trappings of
the human sickness. I was told of
Something not greater, but Bigger
then my whole world
—granted, a seven-year old’s world is the
size of an oyster, with them as the pearl—
that dealt in a hand of cards with
each suit a different type of miracle.
My mind was imprinted on with
the imagery, the shining glory, of
angels and wings and chariots,
who swept man off his feet to
spit Words of Truth, handpiece
to God and examples to look up to
—but no one ever mentioned how
Moses was buried in the sand.
The neural pathways for divine faith have
been ordered, constructed, red ribbon cut,
all for no crowd to show up. I have an
illness that requires an intervention of a
LORD on HIGH, but all I have are the
echoes of a Man’s God being read to
a group of children in a
white room with grey floors.
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