He will take you
If you run
He will chase you
He will take you
If you run
He will chase you
Because he is the Lord
The sirens are wailing. The motorcyclist lay dead in a clump on top of the car. His bike crushed beneath the fractured limbs of the vehicle. He’s dead now. Perhaps it was inevitable, but it didn’t have to be.
Lost forever, displaced from this world, the biker’s bloodied helmet caresses his shattered skull. His leather jacket still adorned with the menacing images of freedom and road-warrior solidarity. In this moment, he is alone. Alone and forsaken, expect perhaps by one.
It’s hard to write of his death because it’s still yesterday. The image of his silent face still cradled by the helmet, the dead veins, the dead heart refusing to beat. I reach for him from a distance but resign to drape his corpse beneath a fitted sheet, adorning him in privacy from the passing cars and gawking, yawning, open-mouthed gazes. His lifeless body bothers me, though I can only assume he is indifferent to the covering.
This was a death that struck at my soul. It still haunts me. So many things have followed that made this moment feel like I was falling down stairs. Preceding this incident was a terrorizing season of panic attacks. I always described them as an uncontrollable spiral, the mind and body at war with itself. Falling down stairs now feels more appropriate. In the year prior to the rider’s death, the pandemic response began, pushing people indoors faster than the humidity and the Florida summer heat. Everyone hid. Everyone.
I found myself broken with anger and confusion. I was too stubborn to stay off the roof and peer out over the landscape. I had to see what was behind the curtain. What I saw was terrible. It had tentacles and they sucked at the soul’s marrow and blood and fluid fled from my eyes. I came to believe that psychological turmoil manifested themselves in physiological ways. I lost most of my vision in my right eye. I was told it would return but it hasn’t. My kids now think it’s funny when, at the end of a long day, I wear an eye patch because my tired eyes become tangled in a drunken haze of double vision. Rather than fight with the competing imagery, I send the dying eye into outer darkness.
It’s not all bad. Thankfully, Malcolm Guite showed me a way back home.
Begin the song exactly where you are
For where you are contains where you have been
And holds the vision of your final sphere
And do not fear the memory of sin;
Begin the song from the beginning, which is wherever your feet are currently planted. Memories of sin and failure certainly do cause one to fear. “Where shall you take me in my broken state?”
Is there a new vantage from which I can see the pillars of truth on the distant horizon?
There is a light that heals, and, where it falls,
Transfigures and redeems the darkest stain
Into translucent colour. Loose the veils
And draw the curtains back, unbar the doors,
Of that dread threshold where your spirit fails,
An old hymn echoes the beauty within Guite’s poem. There is a light that never fails.
There’s a light that never fails,
Shining o’er the hills and vales,
Of the rugged pathway over which we go;
And its rays are ever bright,
Lighting up the darkest night,
‘Tis the light of heaven shining here below
Wondrous light that never fails,
Guiding light that never fails;
Gleaming from the throne above,
Golden rays of perfect love,
‘Tis the wondrous light that never, never fails.
The hopeless gate that holds in all the fears
That haunt your shadowed city, fling it wide
And open to the light that finds and fares
Through the dark pathways where you run and hide,
through all the alleys of your riddled heart,
As pierced and open as His wounded side.
Open the map to Him and make a start,
Where will the map of this riddled heart lead? Will it lead to his wounded side? To me, this is a poem of repentance. To start a journey over, in spite of the starting point. The light that never fails exposes the darkest places, it burns and refines the heart with fire. The dark pathways are lit and the lamp of one billion lumens lights the path ahead. The graceful gift of repentance is an act of mercy from God. He didn’t have to give me a new day, a fresh start. He didn’t have to open his wounded side to the flood of blood and water that gushed forth, cleansing everything downstream.
And down the dizzy spirals, through the dark
His light will go before you, let Him chart
And name and heal. Expose the hidden ache
To him, the stinging fires and smoke that blind
Your judgement, carry you away, the mirk
And muted gloom in which you cannot find
The love that you once thought worth dying for.
Chart and name and heal. Like a cartographer interpreting a worn, riddled map, the Spirit speaks the silent language of the heart. He opens the door that was shut. He interprets the babbling tongue of the broken-throated vocal chords. He binds the languid limbs that contort. A trip in the dark, falling down spiral stairs, the collapsed body, broken at the bottom, requires a physician. He dissects and reinstitutes the fissures and ligaments.
Call Him to all you cannot call to mind
He comes to harrow Hell and now to your
Well guarded fortress let His love descend.
The icy ego at your frozen core
Can hear His call at last. Will you respond?
The heart is a tireless traveler and the path without his light is dark and listless. Then the light shines and the meanderings of a mad man are made right — the legions dislodged and thrust into swine heading for the cliff. He calls. He calls. He calls.
I embrace the path forward and his light goes before me. Lord, help me not look to the right or the left. Help me keep my feet from evil. Amen.
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33
Through the Gate, by Malcolm Guite
Begin the song exactly where you are
For where you are contains where you have been
And holds the vision of your final sphere
And do not fear the memory of sin;
There is a light that heals, and, where it falls,
Transfigures and redeems the darkest stain
Into translucent colour. Loose the veils
And draw the curtains back, unbar the doors,
Of that dread threshold where your spirit fails,
The hopeless gate that holds in all the fears
That haunt your shadowed city, fling it wide
And open to the light that finds and fares
Through the dark pathways where you run and hide,
through all the alleys of your riddled heart,
As pierced and open as His wounded side.
Open the map to Him and make a start,
And down the dizzy spirals, through the dark
His light will go before you, let Him chart
And name and heal. Expose the hidden ache
To him, the stinging fires and smoke that blind
Your judgement, carry you away, the mirk
And muted gloom in which you cannot find
The love that you once thought worth dying for.
Call Him to all you cannot call to mind
He comes to harrow Hell and now to your
Well guarded fortress let His love descend.
The icy ego at your frozen core
Can hear His call at last. Will you respond?