2024-03-26 A Meditation on Life’s Superstructure

“22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 25 For David says concerning him, “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’” (Acts 2:22-28 ESV)

All too soon the more subtle thoughts give way to a confident upholding of Jesus enfeebled body, the corpse nothing by way of reminder that life itself is abundant but brief, invaluable yet absent. There is something to uphold as we await a Good Morning, as we await firm grappling meets subtle call and response across the aisle: to be peace is to punch the wall a bit. It is to have the firm hands of a therapist whilst allotting provable space for the gentler inclinations. We dare go high and wide on a lark of a peace-loving Mission, only to be trained up for the soldier’s Call. We Believe: that a subtle sensitive parlay may just be possible, recommended, and potable, held aloft even as every human inclination is to jest and scoff, to attack, to murder the weakness that Jesus so—yes, nobly—showed.

We are after all high and lifted up in the dreamscape of come-what-may, and there is no paradox nor contradiction: the soldier fights. The soldier knows war. The soldier, however, believes in a superstructure that Comprehends, that is Dutiful, that is more than brash warmongering. The soldier knows the firm grasp of the life masseuse or the sports therapist, the psychologist’s Ordained Call to stare and expect an answer. We Believe, that our future war is a tomorrow war that precludes nothing by way of today’s sojourn in the dreamworld. We are not the weaker for our inexpressible ideas, but rather stronger and the commitment supercedes the newsman’s headlines. Life will just get a little more circumspect around here. Life will just appeal on some superlative level, to do our own Duty by way of the conflagration. Life’s conflagrations. A message misheard or laughed at. A rubble of what was something Grand and High and Lifted Up, with not even the history of a time to mourn its loss. We are in strange climes and better late than never, but still called upon to Fight, to Engage, to Team Up and know that gentler oils and spirits and call-and-response commend themselves to the war-weary and duty-bound soldier.

We do our service, then, in this Expectation of a corpse from which in the last issue life can no longer be robbed from. It was all beyond the realm of imagination, so dead was the child and the mature Man, Woman, Human. It was all an End that beckoned not with a new beginning as of this day. It was Tomorrow that would astonish and surprise. It was Tomorrow that would somehow instill a reward to the ones refusing to cave in to futile grabbing and strife. It was Tomorrow that heard the humorist’s Peacetime acclimatization. And went with it. Survived, not by determination but by accepting Defeat. The corpse, no longer viable, no longer infused with some strange quality of life, but yet again then there is Tomorrow’s War, won by early dawn. God with us, and nothing to be rigid or unbending, unforgiving about.