Death for Dinner

As should be expected during Lent or any other time of a special push toward holiness, the Divider has appeared to challenge me. You know him, the Diabolo, the spirit-guy who assigned himself, or was assigned, to mislead and trip those on the path to the land of immortality, lest riffraff be allowed into Kingdom Come.

As my beloved mom would say, “you know it’s not always happy-happy.” Well it sure ain’t happy now. I have been pushed away by someone I want most to be united with because I unintentionally offended her. I have been caste into outer darkness. I am dumbfounded because what I saw as small, she sees as huge. What I would laugh off, she is using as a hot twirling sword to cut me off. So now I am in hell during Lent.

If the Orthodox theologians have it right, there are no parties in hell. All the faithless people who like to imagine physical death to be either an eternal dreamless sleep or a big party in a hot place, all those people should make some room in their equations for the saintly prophesized probability that a non-stop severe loneliness is behind the curtain they have chosen. Hell is being cut off from others, especially those we love, and now I get to feel what that is like. Sometimes I want to weep and sometimes gnash my teeth but mostly I weep!

One thing I should know is to stop eating what el Diabolo is feeding me for dinner. This is Lent; I am supposed to be fasting, so why do I gorge myself on thoughts of the pain of separation. Worse yet, why do I chew and chew, taking these thoughts to fantastic hellish conclusions or relating them to past tumultuous nightmares like a kid picks at an old scab until it starts bleeding again, a fresh new wound to inflict upon myself as if the enemy wasn’t bad enough. With fervor, I join el Diabolo to pierce the heart of Evangeline and watch her slowly bleed to death.

Silly child, it is time to stop wolfing down the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of evil and cling to God for life.

The film Forrest Gump was rich in symbolism. My favorite scene was when legless Lieutenant Dan shimmied up the pole in Forrest’s shrimp boat and was yelling at God in the storm. He clung to that pole for dear life. Poor Dan had confused life with death and death with life, clinging to a dead pole yelling at Life to be damned. It’s a normal mistake.

Life is union with God because he is the Creator of Life! In or out of this fleshiness, death is nothing more than separation from God. Love is union with others made in His image and likeness which is why most everyone wants love so much and why we pursue it in any old form. Life = love = union. God unites, the devil separates.

Ah math and philosophy help me feel better!

The pain of rejection is a dinner of death and as if I was starving I am eating it.

The only way to fight the divider, el Diabolo and fight I must, wimp that I am, is to cling to God like Lt. Dan clung to the pole in the storm.

The only way to cling to God is to think and behave like Him. Go the second mile, love my enemies, unite whenever possible rather than divide further.

Oh geez, I am having such a craving for an ice cream cone right now. That was a bad joke. It means to fast from food, especially during this volatile period of the Great and Holy Lent, is effective if it can make me strong enough to fast from death in all of its familiar diabolical forms.

It is not in my power to bring my beloved back. I can’t control her heart. There must be something about this separation that comforts her. So instead I should reject that death sandwich and focus on loving God, then perhaps He will grant my wish and bring my beloved back to me, because He can control her heart. This is a difficult challenge but our God won’t have wimps in Kingdom Come.