light, exploding

this moment-
the christmas lights are clumsily strewn about the tops of the walls
my fingers are cold - the heat is down and the winter seeps through mismatched windows and old glass panes.
i can feel the words sitting there, about halfway between my heart and my lips, but they're not coming out, not yet. i opened this page hoping they would come out through my hands and onto a page.
something about light. like - pressure is growing in my heart - a blast of light, just concealed beneath a thick warm layer of tangible reality, carefully composed face, captured body.
i want to open my mouth - look up, open my mouth - the light is there, it wants to fly out, it wants to join the angels of light packing this room to the brim, they will carry it to heaven and everything, everything will make sense and God will be
here
and i will be there in all hearts, there with Him, i can feel it, a million hearts pulsing, breaking, trembling, loving, all of them, all of them. to fly into the light is to plunge into the depths, the liquid love. but not - not yet, not yet, my life is a not yet, just wait, not quite. i want to
break through, you know, break
through and into a million nothings and everythings but first
this life has to
die, you know, fade away, pass away, i must dissolve into the
New Being but i
myself, i will die, and because of that i am scared. scared. everything inside of me tells me to leave Him, just - just leave Him. follow Him and you will suffer. you will break. you will die. die. turn back. don't look back, just turn back. don't follow Him, He'll lead you to the cross, He'll take you there and point to it lying on the ground and look at you with those irresistible eyes, the ones that you can't, you can't tell no, and He'll tell you to pick it up. and you will. just leave now, if you're smart, pretend you never knew Him, you never loved Him. but i know, i know, that if i leave Him i'll die, i'll forget what it means to love and live and breathe light and gasp joy and break into beauty, i know that the cross comes before, the resurrection, the resurrection, is so far off. today is palm sunday, i know the rest is
coming
but it seems so far, so far off.
i wonder if palm sunday was the hardest.
the easiest to run away.
you could tell yourself it wasn't fear, you just changed your mind, you just - maybe you didn't hear Him right, you know, things get mixed up between here and there all the time. you thought you heard one thing and you did another, but who really knows anyway? by the time thursday comes around its undoubtable. fear or courage. hope or despair. no more ambiguity. maybe that's why it's so beautiful.
even Christ despaired at the end. the final brokenness, just before death, a complete death, for a full resurrection of New Being.

give me a reason to leave and i'll give you a reason to stay. one foot in front of the other - the marine corps taught me something about God after all - one foot in front of the other. it's the destination. we have a hope, we have glimpsed - heaven - we have glimpsed -
light and love and breaking flowing beauty and grace and hope and
glory
and we know
we know
it is worth every ounce of
blood
and pain
and tears
because we've seen
we've seen.


love.