God of the Night

I lie awake in the middle of the night having been awoken by a thunder storm. Unable to return to sleep — so I turn to TW and it appears as if someone has been able to draw out the jumbled mess of emotions I have been struggling with and posted them for me so that I can examine them and put words to my cries and moans (carrying an inconsolable emptiness wrapped in rice paper veneer). Thank you, Skip. It is comforting to know I am not alone (alone in a desperate search for Your peace, bloodied by the failures of the past).

`The loneliness that heralds my separation has always been there. All the attempts of the yetzer ha-ra just end up attempts to deny, rationalize or cover over the chain that ties me to the body of that death, that fracture.

The great naturalist, Ernest Thompson Seton, who hunted the legendary ‘problem’ animals of the great West a century ago, but who also loved them and wrote some of the most illustrious and sensitive stories chronicling their lives, wrote one about a problem fox he was called in to deal with. No way that could be devised worked with this smartest of foxes, until he decided to find and raid her den. Upon that success, all the pups were killed save one, which they brought back and chained outside the chicken house, which this fox was wont to raid. All around this pup were buried traps and poison baits galore. Well, the mother came. She avoided all the traps and deigned the bait, and grabbed her pup by the scruff and tried to make off with him. Cruelly jerked short by the chain, she was finally forced to quit trying to rescue him. In her frustration, she instead successfully raided the hen house, and fed him. The next night she returned, avoided all the traps again, and tried to haul him off. Failing again, she proceeded to dig a huge mound of dirt over the chain. When the chain was completely buried, she tried again to grab him and take him away, but the buried chain still held. Frustrated again, she raided the hens for his supper, and retired. The third night she showed up, and, successfully avoiding all the traps for herself, but failing again to take him away, she then deliberately went over to a poison bait, picked it up, and took it back to feed her pup for his supper. She never returned again.

Don’t we also try all these ways to deal with the problem of sin? We try to haul off with what we need, but unless we are free, that chain jerks us short. We then attempt to bury the chain of Self with addictions and all sorts of mind, mood and spirit-altering behavior, in the vain hope that what we cannot see, does not exist, or at least does not matter. Then, failing that, so many times, don’t we just despair and eat the poison? These are desperate, heart-tearing attempts by the yetzer ha-ra to solve the problem, which is fracture. We are set against the sources of nourishment we need around us, as the enemy claims so many of those we need the most, including all the false gods, and those who are within our intimate circles are also captured and baited by the enemy, waiting for us to attempt to succeed in relationship, only to then cruelly separate us or bait us into sin. We are in a mess!

We are hard-wired for relationship, for love. All the desire of the yetzer ha-ra is for love, but because Self is opposed to the Gate, which is the only way in, the only other way Self can see to the nourishment it must have is over the wall. We come as a thief. We also attempt to pick the low-hanging fruit that hangs over that wall, but it sickens us instead. So we elect to stay in the City of Destruction, drugged by sin into mind and emotion-altering states that promise to separate us from the fear, loneliness and shame that should alert us to the fact of our fracture. The Way to wholeness of spirit, soul and body, we have been set in opposition to, by starting out with Self in the place of that Way. At the outset, our atlases got switched at the printers. Trying to re-write the code for our direction in our own image, we miss the mark of the High Calling. In our shame, we try to bury the chain that keeps us from the freedom of relationship. Tied to death, the flesh sees nothing but acquiescence to that death. Self is on a fast track to Sheol. Yes, it is.

To stand in the place of my loneliness, then, is to go back and stand again in the fork of the road. Broad is the way that leads to my destruction, but as I stand and ponder, perhaps this time the Way less traveled by will look correct, and perhaps this time I will choose that Way less traveled by, and that will make all the difference. To be burned by sin is also to have my eyes opened to that sin. The beating I got on that broad way of Self can be useful to remember why that way is really not a way. It is more like circling a drain!