flaming jewels

We Walk Behind the Wall

I honor your pain.

I know you suffer. Your agonies are precious and unique and no one, no one feels them in exactly the same way.

Our individual pain, our own suffering is what makes us...US. It is intimately part of our souls, our identity.

And I honor your pain. I really do.

And yet, and yet--

There comes a time when individual sorrow and pain become self-indulgent. There comes a time when we glorify our agony. There comes a time when we celebrate it to an obscene and selfish degree.

And I have thought about this. The days when it is hard for me to get out of bed. The evil I have known: how once it took my small hand and led me through the valley of destruction. Bone-deep loneliness felt inextricably in vital crowds. A bleeding sympathy for small hurt and broken things; animals, children--

I have thought about this.

And I invite you to think--

The next time you can't get out of bed. When your lover is cruel. When your friends are callous. When you think your life sucks and you just can't go on.

Remember:

You did not suffer through the Holocaust.

You did not walk the Trail of Tears.

Your name is not on The Wall.

You were not chased by a lynch mob in Mississippi.

You did not suffer the Khmer Rouge.

You were not "Disappeared."

You are not trying to survive in Bosnia RIGHT NOW.

Recently, I saw the Vietnam War Memorial. I saw The Wall. That great black slash-wound in the earth. That dark marble crevice giving up the names of the war dead.

And it is true, what they say. It hurts to look at. It is long, longer than you would think. There are so many names. It is hard to take it in. So, I walked closer. I walked its length. And it is true, what they say. I saw myself reflected there in the dark marble, my small form walking behind the names.

I drew closer to it and saw one name at eye-level. I paused to read, to touch: Billy Jack Roberts. My eyes filled with tears. I did not care. I touched his name lightly, then touched my lips. Touched his name. My lips. Name. Lips. Billy Jack Roberts.

Cameras flashed around me. I wondered briefly if someone was taking a picture of me: sorrowful daughter come to honor the father she never knew. For all I know, it might be true. I never knew my blood father.

I cried there, at The Wall. I didn't care what people thought. The pain, that pain...could not be contained in me. I am a small and imperfect vessel.

But I can encompass more than my own pain.

Life and Death are MORE than who we are.

Billy Jack Roberts, your name is on The Wall.

The next time you are lying in your bathtub with the razor at your wrist, the next time the car keys are in the ignition and you think about closing the garage door, the next time the noose is at your neck, the gun is in your hand--

Just think. About Billy Jack Roberts. Vietnam. Crazy Horse. Wounded Knee. Sand Creek. Angola. Cambodia. Rwanda. Bosnia. El Salvador. Oscar Romero. Olga.

Let me tell you about Olga.

Recently, I visited the Holocaust Museum. I walked through it for hours. And, despite everything I saw--the footage of death squads, of book burnings, of medical experiments, of executions, of horrors I cannot give name to--despite everything I saw, I thought I could keep it together. I thought I would not cry.

But, near the end, there is a wall filled with children's drawings. Construction paper. Crayon and pencil drawings. Jewish children drew them at a "way station," a place they stayed at briefly before they were sent to the Death Camps.

I stood there, looking at these drawings and I felt a cold wave wash over me. I stumbled, had to grab the hand rail. Felt my eyes burn with something more than tears. I did not care what the other visitors thought of this strange woman with hot eyes and hitching breath who stared at the drawings. I could not contain what I felt. Could not hold it.

All the pictures had names and dates below them. One was Olga's. Born 1933. Sent to Auschwitz 1943. It did not say if she survived.

I cannot describe the pictures for you. I cannot describe what I saw. Or how I felt. It is beyond me. I am an imperfect vessel.

Ten years old. Olga. Think about it. Think about it.

The next time you feel suicidal, think about the Holocaust. The next time you feel you can't go on, think about Vietnam. About the Trail of Tears. About Death Squads. About Lynch Mobs. Think of those who died. Massacred. Murdered. What would Billy Jack Roberts have given for one more day of life? What would Olga have given? One more day. Or one more hour. Even five more minutes.

Five more fucking minutes.

Of life.

Think about it. The next five minutes of your life.

Infinitely miraculous, infinitely precious.

When I think about these things, I look at my pain and loneliness, my scars, the evil I have known and, why, it is like an old friend! Familiar. Its boundaries known; its linaments deeply felt.

Life and Death are MORE than who I am.

Infinitely miraculous, infinitely precious.

Our names are not on The Wall. But we walk behind them, darkly reflected.

And if you think on these things, on what I have suggested to you here and you say: You have proved my point. Life sucks. People are evil. There is no hope. I may as well die. If you say this, then you have come as close to earning my hatred as anything.

I have no hate in my heart. But, if I did, I would hate cynics.

Cynics are weak. They have not the strength to hope. They destroy others' spirits, hearts, and dreams through their apathy and despair. They have no faith. Their souls are shriveled. Cynics are weak.

I think on these things and I still hope. I have faith. I even have love. And sometimes, joy.

Think about it. Five more minutes.

Infinitely miraculous, infinitely precious.

I can barely contain, barely understand the Holocaust. Vietnam. Slavery. The Massacre of Native Americans. I can barely grasp the magnitude of the evil, the sorrow. But I know that when I contemplate such things, something very strange and foolish happens: after I have cried; after my eyes stop burning and my legs stop trembling.

It's a funny kind of thought. Ridiculous, even. Naive, I suppose. Idealistic, certainly. But, what I think is this:

Each person is infinitely miraculous and precious. And the smallest things we do for one another matter. A word, a touch, a look. The most insignificant acts of kindness, the briefest moments of connection, MATTER.

I think of how the delicate sweep of a butterfly's wing can result in a storm hundreds of miles away.

It is, perhaps, what we are here for.

Hope. Faith. Love. Even joy.

So, when your sorrow and pain seem unbearable. When evil takes your hand. Please, think. For five minutes.

Just five minutes.

Infinitely miraculous, infinitely precious.

Remember.

And wake up.

Wake up!

jewel@gleeful.com
a seraph production