My Heart Breaks, but the Shadow Must Out!
July 2020: America’s Shadow is showing. Everything is falling apart! How is it that we have come this far and we’re still in the Dark Ages?
July 1, 2020. This is not a new experience, this nothing-seems-to-matter space that I find myself in today. Every so often, maybe every two or three years, it either wells up from inside me and blankets me in a rancid cloud of body odor as visible to the eye as the steamy aura of sweat around the body after the most rigorous workout, or it descends on me like a wild-game net activated by a tripwire.
It’s no mystery how the wire got tripped: there’s the coronavirus, the mask deniers, Evangelicals who seem to be willing to support the antichrist to satisfy their perceived religious needs, a politician more outrageous than the SNL writers could dream up, the use of deadly force by police for selling loose cigarettes or possibly passing a counterfeit $20 bill, the agony and rage and betrayal experienced by African Americans and other non-whites at the hands of others, the Dark Ages consciousness revealed clinging to the coattails of America’s Shadow, the malicious, conspiracy rantings of QAnon, and the people who breathlessly repeat the fantasies, including people I know and used to trust!
It’s all of that and more.
I know how critical it is that America’s Shadow be exposed, and I know that if it continued to be concealed, denied and unacknowledged, it would simply grow stronger and erupt with an even wider burst radius, engulfing us all.
And it is so painful, so heart-breaking, so divisive, so unloving, so terrifying, so relentless! There seems to be no end.
How could we have survived this long, this many thousands of generations? How could we have so failed to learn from the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Bible, Jesus, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the ubiquitous Golden Rule? And how could we still be so selfish, so distrustful, so ignorant, so spiteful, so antagonistic and so blind?
All of that must be felt daily by any thoughtful, heartful, sincere human being, by the saints, even, by God, perhaps, and not just by me.
So, what is it about all of this that I take so personally, that affects me so deeply, that ravages my soul? Is it that I feel powerless to do anything to bring about improvement or is it that I have simply not stepped out of formation to volunteer? Is it that I just don’t know what to do?
I’ve even been robbed of my usual certainty about even having a purpose or a destiny, of being called (again), this time to really serve. I feel listless, unmotivated, impotent, tired, unguided, irrelevant. Not always, not in every moment, but now and again, every once in a while, in between watching CNN and the latest political YouTube video and lying on the glider on the porch, gazing off into the distance, studying the face, the slopes, the summit of Mt. Antero, listening to the birds and watching the shade sail rise and fall like a red tide above my head.
Nothing seems to matter, though a telephone interaction with a friend or an ounce of Ghirardelli or Chocolove, a wedge of chilled watermelon or a gluten-free brownie might help for a while, for a moment.
The world is coming to an end, the world that we know. The world must come to an end — this world — so the next can rush in. And it’s so goddamn painful! I treasure my sleep even more because it usually allows me to shuffle off the little stage in this grand theater of life for just a while. If I didn’t feel guilty doing it, I could probably sleep twelve hours at a stretch, like a cat, but without the hypervigilance.
I do not, cannot simply wish it all to stop. I don’t relish the pain, but I cannot pray for it to end, but rather to resolve, to complete, to rise up, to illuminate, to reach its crescendo, the Hallelujah Chorus. To enlighten me, to educate me, to reassure me, to include me.
And that’s just what I’m feeling, feeling in the moment, this moment, not every single moment. I know some things. My experience and my intellect tell me that this is all necessary, that this is good, that this is all necessary. I know that. And I can still feel awful, can’t I? To feel is actually a blessing, especially since I spent half my life not feeling.
But it’s frustrating when I can see all sides and accept it all at the same time.
At least I can go to sleep in a few minutes and check out for a few hours and rebuild my strength for tomorrow. Tomorrow, the first day of the rest of my life. Hallelujah?
© 2020, 2024, Paul Wesley Burke. All rights reserved.
