Tossed to and fro

Tossed to and fro

            In the last months I have been tossed to and fro, betwixt old and new ideas, old and new faces, as if having been called upon to live in the no man’s land at Verdun, while smelling the putrid air of the Somme or caught like a dog between machines and artillery and rifles at Kursk.  I have been tossed to and fro and the experience has left me shaken and changed, angry and yet hopefully more kind, and surely never able to return to whence I came.  I am tossed on to an island but am contradicted for before I have read that there are no islands, that no man can be an island or on an island.  We are connected one to another beneath the heavens and cannot be separated but by an act of the one who is the shepherd who separates the flocks with his divining rod and takes the sheep to one side and the goats to another.  So I stand alone on an island as if I were an island.  The contradiction with all I have thought to be true worries me, and I wonder if I have wandered astray from the shepherd’s flock.

            I slowly stand with a broken thought.

            I have heard “Judge not!”  Have I understood you who are in the heavens as to what this means?

            Does it mean that I am not to condemn another?

            Does it also mean that I am not the one to justify another?

            Does it mean I am not the one to condemn myself?

            Does it mean I am no more the one to defend and justify myself?

            Does it mean I am to be silent when your word speaks regarding my actions?

            Does it mean that when I am called to give account I will be silent?

            Does it mean that unless he who speaks is called upon to speak from the right hand of God that all, yes every word is vain and is but the empty words of men without knowledge trying to decipher the meaning as if they could discover meaning when they jingle the coins in their pocket?

            My silence is followed by my touching of my head, of my heart, one shoulder and then the other.  I speak only to say “Lord Jesus be merciful to me the sinner.”  I repeat these words and continue repeating them.  They seem to have no meaning but I repeat them, mumbling them over as if to say to him in heaven let these words fill my heart, consume my soul, and become my strength.

I slowly take notice that I am not on an island at all, but on a vast continent.  The sun shines, the birds chirp, the waters have fish and fishes.  The land is covered with plants of green, at least they will be green come spring, and there are trees rising from the ground to give shade even if dormant in winter’s gray.  There are before me small creatures barely capable of being seen, multitudes more that must be unseen, four legged animals some that must be some child’s pet, some child whether eight or eighty.   I see people walking about.  I have hardly seen before how beautiful and how weary and often times how lonely these faces are.  Mine must look much the same.  Mine must be plain for mine reflects me.  But there is something different and exotic in every other face I see, a face of someone other than me.  I thank the heavens for someone besides me.  I begin to faintly smile for it is not so bad to be placed in the midst of ideas old and new, betwixt people old and new; not on an island but on a continent beneath the heavens, here on this earth that you have made for yourself.  Yes for yourself and also for the creatures whom you have created to live and whom you delight to see play before your eyes.  Yes and for me and for humanity for which you gave your life.  And so if thy judgment is swallowed up in your mercy so shall mine be swallowed up in your mercy.