Soap

I feel manufactured. I feel like I smell like the soap of a thousand public bathrooms. I feel like I’m wearing the clothes a thousand women my age have cluttering their closets. My fingers are no different. The ink of my tattoo is not unique. I am a product. A by product of an overworked and under-dreamed society. So can the passion I have be attributed to anything more than a side effect? Am I really a rebel if I am simply another reaction against the movements that are unstoppable?

nihilism calls

absurdity beckons

i answer

i fade

And in the fading I find that i am. And I find I AM. Because the material world will fade, but something will keep going. If spiritual can outlast material, and ideas are larger than the buildings we construct, then I have something to live for because my life is more than an end in itself.

romanticism calls

beauty beckons

i answer

i thrive

Why write? Why imagine? Why do anything? My nihilist mind wept non-existent tears in a mourning without grieving for a beauty that was never seen…. Until I understood. Why do I write to please my soul? Because I too was written as a pleasure to the soul of the Author. And my pragmatic behavior rebels. What good does it do to revel in beauty when it saves no one? Because it is saving me. In beauty, in creating, I am experiencing the heart of my Creator. In beauty, in running, I am experiencing the physicality of the Incarnation. In beauty, in singing, I am experiencing the music of the heart of God, the creator of unknown notes. In beauty, in hiking, in travel, in exploring, I am with the heart of the Living One, the Mighty One, Adonai.

He calls

Beauty beckons

I answer

I live