“2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Php 2:1–11 ESV)

Mimickry, high similitude, designs of imitation: somehow plugged into the netherworld, somehow catching oneself self-destructive or manic (but not just Normal), somehow Forgetful, God is the blessed Cheer of a peer, a parent, a sister or brother: these things coach to the end of Christ-like Servanthood, mimickry, similitude, imitation. We imitate Him. We trust that His designs, patterns of ethics, morality, is the Right One. For us to follow, and live into.

The soldier is forged in a furnace of affliction, such that his or her “New Normal” is amped, is elevated, is accrued as Hot Stuff for the ride. Normal is rarely found, this kind of normal, as we wait in ditches and caverns, in trenches and barracks, patiently for the chance just to Operate Elevated. We are those others claim are sleep-walking, needing some Prompt, some Heightened Alert, before we manically Endeavor and Piece Together in Haste, our warring Response. We do better under pressure, as soldiers of a mettle not frightful (but this emblem, this character trait, we take in stride, not boastful of our Service, our Bravery, our Duty, but weeping over what hidden thoughts are brought to light Under Pressure of dialog). Not frightful, not strange-headed, not hateful or capricious, not desiring to see others in pain, but Imputed by a friend to be Good, and reckoning therefore with our own Goodness.

No longer frightful, we endeavor to catch in all moments the Urgency and the “Dying Man’s last words”. The words of Eternal Life, life words of Encouragement, the words of Sympathy. We sympathize. We love. We counsel over and against the lazy Self-Righteousness.

God the Father is real. The bridegroom of the Church, Christ Himself, is real. We are those strangely awakened—it is more than just a dream—to the ordering of the Operation, so called because the soldier’s part-time relic of a job as Intelligence, as Subterfuge-meets-sincerity, alacrity of the Heart’s deepest desire, as Community most banded together, a guild and a Trust: we are Hopeful that one day we shall be allowed to dwell on Edge-of-the-World status, warring madness now calling Each and every one of us to give it our dying-man’s, woman’s Best.

Because the flipside, the middling Sins and Errors made, these haunt us, leave us meek on many fronts, pleading only that our own name be faulted in order that the name of Christ be unbesmirched. No egg on His face, but on ours… if it is that brand of Accusation, of egg-on-the-face that we be allowed to Repent of, minus the gleeful desire for the gossip to spread, and the comprehension of the cool observing masses be appeased. Their hunger. Their desire for some Failure Point, their knowing glance and purr. No, in all this we race to the Father’s loving and forgiving arms, to have Economy and Assembly Line of Forgiveness automated, immediate, brightly saying, “we would rake you over hot coals a bit, but there simply isn’t time for that right now: we have a war to fight”.

Because to forgive is Divine, and if we can forgive ourselves, well the hope is that a Good Word, a Word in Season, will spread and elicit Forgiveness from the rascally crowd. Because it isn’t just that Front on which we fight: in sooth, for truth, we simply don’t Know what the accusation levied our way quite is, we need to be confronted. Because we fight on myriad fronts. We miraculously have survived things that spelt the End of our forerunners, our friends “in the masses” who already lived and died for the Gospel. Already mocked that Christian claim to Know Christ yet to counsel untold Discipline to the would-be saint.