Loss and Lament - a reflection on doing something new

Death is harsh, and one can never fully be ready for it.

Grief is awkward - the kind of awkward that is the cumulative effect of feeling weak, sorry, guilty, vulnerable, being a sore burden and more. Loss is universal, who has not felt it, even if we at first did not recognize it as such?

Yet nothing disarms and connects us to God and each other as sharing in suffering. It is as if our souls have a wire that lights and burns a life-giving glow when the touchpoints of our pain connect. We feel validated, normal, understood. I also know that many of us don’t grieve well and so never reach this gift of solidarity or find out that grief can be the soil of healing and fresh possibilities. So, I decided to try a new thing that isn’t common in churches here: hold a Loss and Lament service.

As a pastor, I am familiar with sitting with the bereaved, organizing memorials and leading funeral services. I had to do a few of my own on four occasions due to the sudden deaths of my loved ones. But this is going to be different. It will be an entire service dedicated to coming to God with our pains, burdens and silent screams. As I shared with a few and began scripting, I realised that Loss and Lament are parallel rivers that share tributaries and I needed to let each have its own flow.

So it became two services. Aug 22 2020 The day began like any other except for the nervous excitement within me. I had put it out on email and social media and still did not have the final list that registered for the online zoom service. With a few hours to go, I browsed the newspapers and saw this advert for a smart watch which my mother-in-law had asked for. It was not a good decision as it led me on a wild online purchase ride that rattled me quite a bit, not the least of which is to find that the shop is in France and basically operates in French. Anyway, after some desperate attempts to clarify and block a double billing, I had to let it go and prepare myself for the service! Then I received word that tech support guy had taken ill. (Let’s just say writing on Medium was already a tech feat for me.) But the service must go on, and it did, even if I had to wave at my zoom host from across the room at several points and my camera froze at another point. Thirty-four persons turned up.

I began the service with a memory that floated to my consciousness, about a time I fell from my bike and just sat on the grass, crying tears too large and many for an adult in an accident like this.

The tears were not because of embarrassment of the the fall and the pain it inflicted, they came from a deeper place. They were overdue tears, waiting for me to be ready to pay attention, to be weak enough to stop holding it all in, to be real. The tears was the stream that connected all I was carrying from the losses I had not properly grieved. As the waters gushed, things got surfaced.

I encouraged us to let the tears come, to mourn, to speak our losses.

In my breakout, I was surprised to see my old friend, and a man who in moments, broke into tears.

We considered how God himself is familiar with loss. God's initial dream of Eden was dashed with a wrong exercise of free will. God's spectacular deliverance of a million slaves dissipated with the grumbling and politicking of these have-nots. God's pursuit was spurned again and again. O yes, God is familiar with Loss.

And so we can come and sit with him in silent communion - who has words equal to any of this?

We come to the Father God of all comfort.

We come to a Saviour who promised that as we mourned, we are blessed for we shall be comforted.

We come to the activity of the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth.

Slowly, we waded into our rivers of loss.

Some got uncomfortable. Most dipped their toes. Many sat under the flow and were surprised it wasn't washing them away, but washing them clearer. As the service progressed, words like these were shared on the chat:

released

peaceful

thoughtful

lighter

calm

reassured

encouraged

unload

free

conscious

loved

Also,

dejected

mourning

pensive

A grief counselor, shared in the chat that she had just lost a newborn grand nephew. None of us got back what we lost. But you can lose through your loss, far more than you need to. You can lose your zeal for life, imagination, loving feelings, faith in yourself, curiosity and hope. While we can’t undo losses, we can grieve in a way that it does not bleed into all of our life and leave a dastardly stain. Aug 29 2020

To lament feels too close to grumbling and complaining, so it feels wrong for the faithful to indulge it. But in truth, we all do it. We cannot help it. There is so much wrong with the world. We lament and wish for a simpler time gone by or hope for a different outcome despite the trajectory.

The Bible realistically records this human need to lament. It's right in the middle with the Psalms, the prophets do it and journal it, and historical events tell of women especially, who lament and wait because of the evil that led to the death of their children and the destruction of their homes.

I urged us not to live half of our lives, just focused on polishing and projecting just the shiny side of us. I urged us to brave the dark and see the treasure hidden in places we rather avoid. I said we were not going to take an emotional shortcut.

Jesus did not take the shortcut.

He lived the stuff of life, and he lamented the state of affairs, the hardness of heart and the dullness of mind.

To help us lament well, in the spirit that Christ did, we stared for minutes at three art pieces that portrayed the Christ figure.

Then we watched this seven minute news documentary about the world in 2019 - image after image of strife, violence, anger and destruction.

It was hard to reckon that so much happened within twelve months, and we barely remember most of it, seeing that 2020 has hit us all with a gale-force of epic scale.

O yes, we needed to lament -- but most of us were too tired, numbed and overwhelmed to do so.

But lamenting for the Christian is the necessary pathway to the eternal trifecta of faith, hope and love.

Without lament, faith is often a wafer thin propositional position that we get all defensive about, hope is mostly an emotional state that requires positive circumstances to prop up, and love, that remains confusing and impossible for us.

In lament we have to face squarely the darkness that humans are capable of doing to each other and our precious shared planet. In lament, we have to confront the limits of good intentions and positive interventions. In lament, we have to admit that "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, ... nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts”*.

Through Lament service I wanted to help us to lament well -- and so live stronger, truer and more committed to all that is good, true and beautiful.

On my way to host the Lament service, I slipped on a wet spot threw the two bags on my shoulder to the ground and broke my fall with my hands and knees. It had already rained most of the day, making it feel like the skies were weeping right along.

Then we had three tech hiccups - enough for a minor lament of its own.

---

The two services are now done.

I shall yet lose more things along the way which may well be the only way to gain some things.

I will continue to lament my own darkness as well as the dark around me.

But comfort, communion with God, and the things that truly last: faith, hope and love, shall be my portion and legacy.

These can be yours too if you allow yourself to grieve and lament.

*Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Dangerous Places in the heart that can kill you

You may think I overstate my case. Death? But I assure you I do not.

We have a view and experience of what it means to be alive. If you read the Word, you find what commonly passes off as 'living' doesn't make the cut of what the Original Intention was {for the whole story on this, please read my book Shed Those Leaves}.

In fact, the word 'death' occurs quite a bit in the Word though it always get trumped by Life (see Resurrection).

This one word is also used to describe three kinds of death:

physical, bodily death - when our body stops to function
permanent spiritual death - when our separation from God is final and irrevocable
current spiritual death - when our lives do not comply with our faith claims

Modern science confirms what the Word says: we do have some influence over our physical passing. Sinful habits that persist can lead to death. But of course, since we are not exactly tracking it, we commonly think that we have absolutely no say. Death comes unannounced for most; and even if you have years or months to wait it out; it will always still feel like a thief sneaked up on you.

The second too is tricky really. Many people obsess over this and want an iron-clad guarantee that once they are saved; they will always be saved. I suppose a very simple analogy can help here. You could be rescued from drowning, but you can choose to jump back into the churning waters. So we certainly do decide on this one; but the decision is not a sales deal or a transaction. It behooves you to think why you were drowning and help others out. Based on what Jesus tells us in Matthew 25, it sounds like there can be some surprises in the end.

The third kind is a daily reality: it's called dying to sin and self in order to truly live. This sits squarely on our shoulders; or should I say, in our hearts.


Why so moribund you may ask?

Well, I was sitting in my special chair where I regularly consider the big questions when I found my thoughts drifting towards a region of the mind-heart that belongs to what I call a dangerous place. It is one of 3 R-rated places in our hearts. I have wrestled with self and sin enough to know that these places starve us of Life and can lend us in a state of spiritual stupor, where we become pale, waterless clouds that live adrift with nary a purpose.

R-egrets

Listen, no one alive has no regrets. Yes I have them; such as this one, where I let my friends down.Or what about the job I chose not to take for some filmsy reason that isn't well-thought through? Who knows what phenomenal success I will be enjoying now if I had taken it.
I once tried to comfort a friend who was unable to forgive herself for years. The regret drove her to depression and shaped her decisions after that. It is easy when we are leafing through our album of regrets for the enemy to slip alongside and say: 'where was God? Didn't He guide you? Were you so sinful?'

R-emorse

This is like the emotional part of Repentance. It's necessary. being sorry for what we have thought/said/done cannot be a cold exercise in the calculation of personal merits! Tears often accompnay genuine repentance. But some of us can be quite absorbed with this..and then the enemy suggests: 'you just won't make a very good one will you? Better not be so h-o-l-y'.

R-ecriminations

We counter-accuse when we feel accused. It's our defense mechanism. We may not say it out loud; but when we are still smarting from unkind words or licking our wounds; it is easy to begin hurling accusations at those who have hurt us or let us down. We label them, put them down, reduce them to their mistake. The enemy is more than happy to add ammo: 'and it isn't the first time is it?'.

Looking back is important in helping us move forward. But it has to be an intentional time set aside to prayerfully consider one's life. Then we visit the places prepared and armed.


But all our minds drift at times, and our emotions tag along and often quickly magnify everything with their uncanny ability to get highly detailed and sensational. At such times, it is important to know not to dawdle, but to turn around and get out quickly. Cry if you must, Rant in your journal. Take a cold shower, run in the rain, have tea and read a book, hit the gym. Beware that dangerous places exist - and you can be safe.

an enemy you cannot see, a Love you must notice

I am 'convalescing'. It means I am on the mend, healing, becoming stronger, getting better. I am regaining strength after a bout of sickness; in this case one brought on by a tiny insect vector: the menacing Aedes Mosquito {I'll spare us the picture}.

Bug bites have never been a huge problem for me. They like me enough; but a scratch or two later, some lotion, and I am fine. Once after a trip to the Philippines I found a large welt on my left ankle. It was huge! I tried to think what creature had inflicted such a mortal-feeling wound on me but a bug bite is not something one notices until it is too late. The bug will not be sticking around to introduce itself! My mind scanned images of irridescent, dark, large, fat-bodied bugs of all sorts. When we landed, an earthquake had just ripped through so we swooped down to lost bags and waist high flood waters. The following two weeks I could have been bitten at many places.

Alas, the doctor's reaction was not exactly assuring; but there wasn't much to do. Thankfully, in another few days, the swell subsided and I was feeling my normal self again.


Ten days ago, I found myself shuddering in my sleep. What I expected followed: fever, aches and a loss of taste. The flu. Well, it's the end of July and I guess I have held out nice and long this year.

But it felt different, in a worse way. Something more sinister was happening. I felt way too exhausted. When I recalled how my area was a dengue hotspot; I decided I should check with my doctor. The test turned out; nothing to be positive about really, positive.

There is nothing external; I cannot even find the bite spot. When did this mortal enemy attack me? What stealth and what damage! A wee little bug easily squished if I had spotted it. But I had not; and it had done me in.

I was really angry.

Here I am, a thousand times larger and - I - lost. And what a darn unfair battle this is. I cannot see you bug! I could have been concentrating on my work when you decided to take a drink. I could be sleeping when you feel a rumbly in your tumbly. Why me?! Many good minded folks like to think of all critters that do damage as a result of the Fall. I am not sure of that; but I do know I was hopping mad that something way down the creation scale can take out a child of the Most High. There was something disturbing about it.

Dengue is one of those things everyone knows something about; and it has a whole scary "you could die from it" dimension where your system can shut down, your organs can bleed and it's all very Ebola like except it's not contagious.

No one can do a whit to help you. There is no medication and so - you just have to hope your body fights back strong.

Much as I would not wish it on anyone, I admit that the many who told me they or their loved ones have had it before gave me much hope. Very few die from it. That's always a good statistic.

Interestingly, the daughter came home from school with a book she got from a giveaway. It turns out to be Tuesdays with Morrie - a book about a dying professor's weekly time with a former student of his; imparting life lessons as he faced his imminent death.

If we cannot spot the bug; then what it can bring in its wake is far harder to anticipate. Some people don't get that sick. Others get way too sick; it turns into what the is called a 'sickness unto death'.

Death is the enemy we cannot really see. Even if you were told like old Morrie was that you had ALS and the doctor gave you a timeframe to expect your life to give up; death will still sneak up un-announced.

I once witnessed someone die before my eyes.

Her breath was very laboured and her daughter and I knew we were just waiting. There was no telling when the exact moment would be. She seemed suspended between the living and the dead...her rising and falling rib cage the only indication she was still on this side. And then, it stopped heaving. She had crossed to the other side. She is forever beyond our reach. Just earlier, we hoped our singing and our tears reached her; but now it felt like a permanence had come over everything. A finality. Someone closed a heavy curtain and the light did not come through any more.

This dengue bout got me a little mad, a little sad, and I could have acted pretty bad too.

The first night I finally was led to my hospital room; I thought the spartan room setting reminded me of the retreat I needed to take.

The Communicable Diseases Centre is such an old relic of bygone days. In fact it dates back to 1907! My room was one in a series of rooms linked by covered walkways as part of a matrix of old bungalow-like buildings. I did not get to see the place much until I left; it was old, homey and quiet; without the usual hive of a hospital. It puzzled me that they placed here - dengue is not infectious - but it's lower occupancy than the hospital and ensured I was already on hospital grounds should I require emergency care; the nurse explained.*

All the nurses and doctors did their best to remind me that they were not able to really help me.

There is no medicine
There is no vaccine
We just hope your platelets rise
Don't brush your teeth, we don't want you bleeding.
Please call us, don't fall down.

So I was reduced to laying in bed and taking four feet to the bathroom. They hooked me to an IV drip that fed me sodium and potassium.

After being in the ER for a while, I insisted that my husband who looked sicker than I return home to rest. A sweet girlfriend came over to see that I was admitted.


While managing drowsily the past week, with the occasional dread of losing it all; I nursed another care within my bosom: the human desperation to live.

Being sick was rough; but my thoughts turned often to the millions of women who unlike me may have no one to care for them, who may have no access to medical care, whose bodies are so sunk from giving that a mosquito bite will bring on their end. I complained about the hospital meals but I have food. The bed had a sinkhole in the middle and the plastic sheets brought on bouts of sweating; but I was in a room, on a bed, with air-conditioning. I had a call buzzer to use when I needed help. My heart ached to think of the women who are alone and in need.

Then there are those who are desperate to live because they keep feeling like they haven't lived it up. Maybe they are hankering for a short getaway, for the dream spouse, to find what they really care about and pursue it with abandon. Some experience it as part of a larger search for self; often co-inciding with the middle years. Many today however are incited to feel dissatisfied in our hyper-consumer culture. 

Then of course there are those like me who are at risk; and if we think about how vulnerable we can all be - a bug bite - it's no wonder many are busy looking for ways to augment life; from pills to Pilates (the latest thing is Rolfing). Of course, I received well-meaning advice soon enough and drank my portion of papaya leaf juice! {It was nasty.}

I wonder if people do live better when they have had a brush with death.

If we seriously consider the odds of staying alive; we should all be more sensible, grateful, and artful about life. But we are not. We are apt to squander it.

Like Mitch Albom, without that providential moment when he caught sight of his old professor and reconnected with the old man, his life was throttling in wild pursuit of a blinding success that inured him to what he truly valued and wanted.

I believe such providential moments exist. I think this sickness is one such moment.

Interestingly for me, I had just taken some time out a few weeks earlier to think about my life and what the next half of it will be about. The exercise left me feeling hugely grateful. Sure there are bits of my life I gripe about. There are days when I cannot be sure where to put my feet. But I have a Purpose. I have a family, a committed spouse, two children who make me laugh. I have gifts I am using. I was still thinking about this, and honestly at this point, wondering about friendships when Dengue struck. My friends emerged from everywhere to pray and communicate care!

Behind all of this stands God - someone I cannot fully comprehend or even relate to -- He is God after all. 

He was extremely quiet while I was in hospital. There must not be much to talk about. I could hardly concentrate to pray or think; and I didn't need to. If God's love for me depended one whit on what I could do; I am dead meat. But it doesn't. It does not begin with my need or my ability and it won't end if I should lose both. 

In the many quiet, half-awake moments I felt cocooned in a safety called Love. 


So I began to think - satisfaction is a state that is cultivated. It begins with the small seeds of gratitude and grows to be a strong tree that can withstand the storms and surprises of life when one realizes that behind and beyond everything stands God; the Great Unchangeable, Constant. Then the desperation to live is real and we must live - not by grasping for what we think we lack - but by gladly enjoying that which is before us.

And of course, things can be better.

Schools can be better.
Marriages can be better.
Church can be better.
The climate can certainly be better.

But things get better because someone is working to make them better. 

And it is hard to make things better when you are bitter. It is a bitter thing to be felled by a tiny bug.

But --  you cannot be bitter for long when you are loved.

Love never fails 

~ 1 Corinthians 13

*although I am not infectious, I carry a virus that can be transmitted by a mozzie! So this makes me 'communicable'. Thank you Patricia Liu for pointing this out!

Holy Week 3: the kingdom is in your midst!

I asked a few dear souls what this week, this season means to them:

Holy Week is a yearly time for me to take a journey inward, to let His light give illumination on some area of my life that needs His redemptive love and lift. Last year He whispered, "Choose what gives life.". – Kenny Chee

Over the past few years, I've come to understand and observe Lent as a season of identifying with Jesus who experienced the tension between his humanity and divinity, in seeking to relate with humanity. It is like standing between two mirrors: one reflects my pre-Christ human condition, which from time to time attempts to reach out from the flesh and seize control; and the other reflects my in-Christ condition, which I continue to grow in and into. Lent is thus the remembrance and observance of the preparatory journey in the inner man to the Cross and the Resurrection. - Ronald & Ethel

Holy Week serves as a timely reminder to us to "practice the presence of God" in our daily life. We try to slow things down, de-clutter our routine and be more mindful of God-appointed moments. All this in order to ponder again and to be renewed by what Jesus has done for us on the cross and what he is doing in us along the journey of life. — Aaron & Namiko Lee

Do you see it?

Their responses describe it so well. Holy Week is not just a rolling of the hours for some remembrance on Good Friday and then a trump of smallish victory at Easter service.

But -

with our eyes socked right in front of our skulls, we tend to look ahead and outward. Yet we have another way of seeing; one we need to learn to use and get used to. It is the look inward. This season, this week, we must use this other way of seeing; where we turn our gaze inward - to where the deeper things lie.

If you want to know --

why you react the way you do;
what truly motivates you
what matters to you
what grieves you
what has mastery over you

you need to look within.


The religious elite, the disciples, the crowd; they all looked outward. They set their attention of what Jesus did; and how it benefited or threatened them. They tried to interpret his actions, maybe even hoped to crack the code so they can do likewise; or otherwise ensure they don't lose out on the miraculous and the action they hope would come when Jesus stands down the Roman powers and ushers in God's kingdom.

So many missed it.

"The Kingdom is in your midst!", Jesus had pronounced.

How would you respond if you were a humble bread maker whose earnings were meagre, or wife to a fisherman who comes home each evening smelling of sea and fish? Would you sneer if you were an up-and-coming young rabbi who has been praised and selected to mingle with the religious big wigs?

We reason it: why, the King is walking about! The potential for the kingdom is always at hand.

But God is not looking for us to explain anything; and of course most of the time our reasoning is meant to convince ourselves!

Of course there have been miracles. Of course the teaching is enrapturing. It still is today. But we can - like the crowds and the leaders; even the disciples - still sort of miss it. 

Jesus was inviting them, and us today; to consider Him as-the-king right in the middle of not-quite-obviously-Kingdom. Jesus was inviting them, and us today; to look into our hearts and find that the Kingdom is what we long for: peace, rule, stability, kindness, compassion, one-ness, purpose...

And as we look, really look. we may find that our Kingdom notions are hazy. We will most certainly with honesty, see that our longing for the Kingdom is being challenged and perhaps undermined by other loves and loyalties.

This week is our appointed time to lean into our Kingdom longings, to feel deeply and really pay attention. 

Here in Singapore, we just lost a father to our nation. With the outpouring of grief and the demonstrations of consideration; we are feeling the rise of a new day. Like the crowds in Jerusalem; we mutter softly, "what if..".  But "what if's" never brought in anything solidly new.

In fact, the crowd, through bribery, coercion and the failures of individual hearts in the end turned on the One they had hoped would bring in the new day - because - they would not identify that God's kingdom must come by God's ways.

A new day for our own lives, families, and for Singapore won't come any other way; for God's ways are unchanging as they are rooted in His character.

If we want a new day to come, we want the kingdom of joy and peace; then we must accept that it comes by the way of the Dolorosa - the long road of cross-bearing and finally, death.

Bonhoeffer, the Kingdom dreamer who would pay for his dream with his life said,

"When Christ bids you come, he bids you come to die.".

A few years ago I began a habit of wearing black and being plain on Good Friday. I mourn not for Christ; for He is risen, but for myself. I am a reluctant die-er. I mourn how my dying is slow. I cling to a false life easily. It sounds crazy to stay hooked to a limited tank of oxygen when one is being invited to a clean, oxygenated garden of delights. But this is me. I am guessing this is you too some days, many days. So I mourn and repent.

But every time, I see that I am even more an eager live-er. I want to really live! So -- I am willing to die.


The kingdom of God, like God himself, is hard for us to get.
We won't quite grasp it with those eyes looking outward.
We need to look within.

And we shall find it lives there, brilliant and dazzling, enthralling and absorbing; and it is pulsing with Life. If we care to open our hearts to others and really receive; we find that it is alive and growing in the spaces between us, binding us to each other.

When we touch it, the Life flows into us and renews us. We get up another day and fight on, live on, laugh on, dream on -- as the Kingdom takes shape in, through and beyond us.

and perhaps this old, meaningfully-worded song: Jesus, God's righteousness revealed {click} as you look inward for a while.

You can die to this one... {our Journey to the Never-dried-up Well resumes}

7 days to Resurrection.

I have always preferred Resurrection to Easter. Besides the fact that Easter have been the subject of speculation {isn't it the name of some goddess? Check it up here: easter origins }, Resurrection is simply easier for us.

Resurrection is the promise made possible by the prototype. Because Christ rose from the dead, death is no longer final for us. We can expect to live on. Heaven is real. Eternity continues when your watch dies on you and your lungs and heart are placed to rest.

But Resurrection comes only after death. So we won't die; but we must die first.

Honestly, no one talks this crazy way but us CHRISTians. See the word 'Christian'? It ends with -ian. It is an acronym for
I
Am
Nothing.

That's right. Remove the CHRIST and all you get is nothing. Zero.
A Christian without Christ is pure oxymoron. Not possible, doesn't exist.

Back to the dying.

We can, and must die.
We can die because Life has come and we know this Life cannot be snuffed out. So whatever we need to die to, we can for we are now unafraid.
We must die because Life doesn't co-exist with death. So whatever within and around us that drains life must be dealt a decisive blow.

Struggling with forgiveness?
Agonizing over an unanswered longing?
Feeling covered in shame and pain?

Die to all of that. Must, and can-be-done.

After nearly half a century on earth and enough battles to write a mini-drama, I know it is hard stuff, this dying. We feel the desperate sense of loss more than we can whiff the promise of triumph. The good we need just doesn't show up quick enough and our soul is frightened that is will suffer even more to go through a dying.
Honestly, it feels plain impossible.

Jesus beckons you to come sit with him.

He may say very little. As you sit there, the turmoil within begins to stir less. Your racing heart finds a new, slower rhythm. The prospect of death is not as overwhelming and frightening as it was before.

Jesus is he who knows all about dying, and can say,

"I am the Resurrection and the Life" ~ John 11v25

Sitting with Life overcomes death.

And just perhaps, that thing you want so much, fought so hard for, cried so many nights over... you suddenly realise that it isn't what you are really thirsting for at all. 

What you really need is right here, by the Well, with the One. 

Complete this sentence then, "What I really need right now is..."

We are now defined and empowered by Christ cannot find it outside from Him. No one and nothing compares with Christ.

He was willing to die for us, to carry the guilt and penalty of our sin.
He is working in us so that we can face ourselves and the assault of death.
He is waiting for us to come sit with Him and let Life enter our beings so that death will no longer sting.

2012?

2012.
I am sure when I was twelve, I could not fathom this in any calendar.
But here I am, at the threshold of it.
it is a big deal - this passing of time. For it's a ticking of our heart and an inching towards the inevitable: our very own passing.

Today, i saw an advert for snail cream. You heard me.... to SLOW down (get it?) the signs of aging from acne to wrinkles.

Go ahead, look good, eat rich, travel wide, so much! But the inexorable force called Life and Death tugs at each of us daily and really, the direction is clearly marked. How can such a simple truism escape us? How can it fail to wake us to 'number our days' and pursue wisdom?

Because the Invitation to really live is daily drowned out by a well-thought and worked through scheme which surrounds, invades, cajoles, convinces us by the moment: this is all there is. So,

 Take it all. If you don't, someone else will. Nothing is safe, no one is secure...take it now.


This mantra is there in pictures, words, sounds, voices. We seem unable to escape. It feels easier to succumb (nicely worded as 'go with the flow').

But then comes a precise point in time. When LIFE rent asunder this madness and denied its power and grip. When LIFE chose the lowly, unlikely, weak and un-esteemed...and whispers through the cold wind, the desperate cries of broken-hearted mothers and the fantastical proclamations of angels to those who could hear.....

Goodwill to men
Peace on earth
Joy!

Since that point in time, we have moved on - many moons, generations, wars and gods later..
and LIFE's invitation continues to ring out in the smile of a infant, the chuckle of a child, the mad dash of a boy let free, the embrace of lovers who know love, the hands that touch kindly, the old woman who prays daily...
each one a tear in the fabric of this tightly woven, suffocating, cloak of inhuman-ness.

and one day, it will be torn asunder and the Glory of LIFE will shine through full.