theblackdostoyevsky

This could be dangerous. Oh, well. Writers write, right? (Resist the urge to equivocate.) And yet, even the parenthetical counts as equivocation. And this is where people stop reading.

James Baldwin’s advice is hard to keep: Write a sentence as clean as a bone. My bones keep meat on them. Writing is a torture than renews with every mark of punctuation. And Stephen King was right, avoid adverbs. Yet, for all of the words on writing I’ve swallowed, of all the novels I’ve gobbled, of all the hours I’ve been informed and entertained by the adventuresome pilgrimages of wayfinding souls, I’ve still no better grasp on this art than when I started. My vocabulary, though, is improved, but I’m not seeing any further than I was, in either depth or height. Or breadth. I am, however, becoming repulsed at these self-conscious musings. Lack of imagination, I suppose. Too many digital distractions and clickbait. My thoughts have shrunk in the hot wash of all this hogwashing through the screens I’m staring into like mirrors for my own reflection. I’m seeing nothing through this glass darkly, but the muddled vision is tightening the sinews of my sentences so that the compound-complex is a yin yoga stretch replete with comma splices. Better not to use commas at all then. All periods, and maybe I’ll be better understood.

Seems like a good time for a new paragraph, no? Because being understood is what I got into this for, right? Which is why I’m always explaining myself to people who don’t care for the logic underlying my choices. We want the dope straight to the vein these days. The chaser’s in the other arm. And I get it. Patience has run thin for complaints. You know, there’s a story in the book of Jasher about when the tower of Babel was being built, that whenever someone atop the ziggurat would drop a brick, everyone would weep tears of sorrow, but when a person slipped and fell to their death nobody would look at them. That’s what happens to people who build castles in the air. That’s what’s happening to me, standing on this wordpress foundation, the perpetual WriterCon of conferences, the Royal Rumble of writers too busy beating on their crafts to read the hearts bleeding all around them, the blood having risen up to the laces of every pair of OnClouds. What am I even doing here? What is the relationship between community and competition? The community exists so that one can rise. Every pyramid needs a base, like the first overall pick needs Mr. Irrelevant. How quickly my freedom transforms into frustration.

Let me slow down. I’m reading in the gospel written by Luke this morning, and got stuck on those verses, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” and I thought, but how? For thousands of years man has practiced the establishment of laws and ordinances, courts and judges, juries and lawyers and teachers of the law, paying a king’s ransom annually in salaries to keep the clerks, and paralegals, and judicial administrators, and bailiffs, and enforcement officers greasing the wheels of a machine dedicated to the process of judging others. And where would we be without it? Surely, life would be nasty, brutish and short. What am I to tell my children when they hit each other? Am I not to judge the behavior and apply sentence to the malefactor (or femalefactor)? I’m kidding about the femalefactor. That’s ridiculous. Does Jesus mean in heart or in deed? Am I free to restrain an unregulated child who is risking harm to other children, or must I let them go. If I am free to restrain, am I free to administer consequences, or is a thoughtful debrief enough. Am I free to admonish, or correct, or rebuke, or advise? What is meant by judge? To determine? That feels more . . . righteous, that judgment would be more a matter of heart than anything else. And it fits well with the context of the surrounding verses, which talks of loving enemies, and praying for those who use you, and turning the other cheek, and giving to those who ask without asking for it in return. We used to call that “Indian-giving.” I never knew what it meant or where it came from, but we used to judge each other with it all the time, “You’re an Indian-giver.” Our intention was to shame.

But still, even if I do not judge in my heart, especially if I do not judge in my heart, I would be even less inclined to administer punishment to an offender, because, though there’d be an offense, I’d be in no position to rebuke it. The thrust of the admonition to “judge not” is that I, too, am an offender, and I’m a perpetual offender at that. Unless, of course, I’m self-righteous, in which case I’ll consider it my duty to run about, to and fro and up and down throughout all the earth, accusing the brethren. You see what I did there? So we’re stuck in dilemma: Judge each other and life becomes less nasty, less brutish, less short; judge not and we open the door to chaos.

And here’s where I’ve landed, for now. “Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest live well; how long or short, permit to Heaven.” That’s a line from Paradise Lost by John Milton. It causes me to wonder why I’m so keen to live long on this earth. Truly, I don’t love or hate my life; I’m just passing through. I see this life, today, like Moses did when he wrote his prayer that’s been recorded in the Bible as the 90th Psalm. What is here, on this earth, that I am so anxious to receive? What am I so longing to see that I have not seen already? Or who am I so fearful to leave behind? And that’s about the size of my languishing here: yearning for a satisfaction that I’ll never receive. Truly, all is vanity and chasing after the wind. How many more delicious meals? How many more astounding panoramas? How many more excursions? How many more good reads? How many more fresh loves? How many more children? How many more highs will it take for me to be quit of this place? Truly, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, but I’ve seen and heard enough. I can see there’s nothing new under the sun, and what I can see coming I don’t want to be a part of. So why not bring on the chaos? Why not let it all burn? Why not allow the cup oF iniquity to fill up as fast as it possibly can and hasten the return of the Lord? Why judge, if all judgment serves to do is postpone the inevitable when what is being postponed for is hardly worth rolling out of bed? I’m not going to equivocate for the polemicists and beg you not to misunderstand me and assume I’m saying what I’m not saying. I’m saying what I’m saying. Maybe what we thought was progress isn’t. Maybe it ain’t worth it to live to be 100 years old. Maybe three score and ten was long enough, when all the days are evil. And if they continue past that, Moses says, their strength is but labor and sorrow.

Yeah, judge not. Let it come. If we perish, we perish, because to live is Christ and to die is gain. But the Lord tarries, because He doesn’t wish that any would perish, but that all would come to eternal life.

Oh, so it’s you He’s waiting on. Got it.