Living Dead Girl

While scrolling through radio stations in search of a satisfying song, I came across "Living Dead Girl" by Rob Zombie.
Not exactly my style, my hand rested on the knob just long enough for a spark to fire in my brain.
Having no idea what the song was meant to be, the phrase began twisting and churning in my brain.

How many people are wandering about their days - step, step, step - feeling the absence of life in their numb yet functioning bones?

How many women have lost their heart's breath at the hands of insult and abuse?
How many boys have lost their power in the absence of a gentle father?
How many men have lost their will to a suffocating spouse?
How many girls are both alive and dead, stuck in a self-loathing image?

How many people?

Society is, if not dead,  broken with multitudes of "living dead girls".

How do I, a stranger and a friend, help infuse life back into the lifeless, before metaphor becomes literal?

A tear slips down.

My only hope is for Hope itself.

Amen.

Protective Layer of Cope

I grew up knowing Jane Fonda to be a fitness tape guru and not much else. The desire to apologize for that ignorance is strong, strong indeed.

As I was flipping channels the other day, I caught her telling some of her story. Recollections of childhood gave my heart a familial ambience as she divulged both raw and dull emotion and dynamics from her past.

Magnetically, she lured me into her narrative and fascinated, I sat perfectly still, listening. As my decaf coffee sat untouched, growing colder phrase by painful phrase, she came to make a profound statement that has revolved and evolved in my mind ever since. It was this:

“We develop coping mechanisms to survive but we keep them longer than their shelf life and they become impediments.”

What once was a cloak wrapped around the heart to protect from the cold bite of pain, now becomes a lasting lacquer leaving no possibility for breath, in or out. Its impenetrable nature chokes life and love both from the host, and those in their midst.

Coping mechanisms are a necessary evil, in fact originating innocently and helpfully. Sometimes we must protect from harm. If we don’t, we might be obliterated in the process of relationship.

But the need to remove the cloak before it solidifies is urgent. If not destroy, at minimum we must keep it pliable, to be used only when necessary.

How do we accomplish this?

I wish I knew. For I fear this progression has already completed its task deep in my heart.

Can the barrier be fractured? I pray it may, letting the air of freedom and love seep in.

 

Amen.

Love God. How?

Loving God.

Without total certainty due to ignorance on my part, but with a fair guess, I would think most people with a sense of spirituality would aim to achieve this at some level - regardless of who or what they see God as being. Although we will not all realize agreement on that subject, today’s concept disregards our differences and can only truly unite, if put into practice.

I have grown up with the idea that worship of God is the ultimate act of love towards Him. Worship was defined as singing songs of praise to Him, thanking Him for what we have, praying words of adoration to Him.

I have since come to disagree with this idea.

I struggle to view God as the supreme essence of megalomania.

I do not deny the benefit of worship as I’ve been taught, to be a helpful reminder of how we view God or of how we endeavour to be, but I now embrace doubt that those actions profit Him.

This leads me straight into the quest for the answer of how truly to love God.

I can only come to one conclusion: The act of loving others is the crucial, essential and implicitly singular method of actually loving Him.

 

I think God, as we do, recognizes the old adage that “talk is cheap”. I don’t think He wants our words aimed back at Himself, but rather His love directed straight at others through what we do. Exponential measures of changed lives can be achieved through pure love shared by those who truly love Him.

We could:

Sing “I love you Lord”

Or

 We could freely babysit for an overworked single mother and rock her babies to sleep with tenderness.

We could:

Say “I am thankful for many blessings”

Or

We could give our warmest leather gloves right off our hands as we come to a street corner with a man sitting freezing in the cold, begging for change.

We could:

Lift our hands as we sing “Your love is amazing”

Or

We could embrace a homosexual and love them just as they are, as we would any cherished heterosexual daughter.

We could:

Bow our heads as we sit in the pews and pray for our sick neighbour

Or

We could hold their hand, cry with them and pray for peace as they lose the battle to cancer.

We could:

Pray for humility

Or

We could volunteer to clean the overused toilets at a teen drop-in centre.

We could:

Pray for forgiveness

Or

In an attitude of repentance, humbly ask for the help we need to take steps to change our negativity.

I have a confession to make.

I have recently wept over my own failures in some of these very areas.

Inadequacy chokes as I type who I desire to be, but know I can never totally become. That is – a complete lover of God.

Love of self stands in the pathway.

I must hope in the redemption of error. (That is, in spite of my faults good can still result, often on the part of others.)

At the same time I must attempt to express my love towards God by rather aiming it towards others.

That is my heart today.
 

Amen.