I open my mouth and place inside the things I have longed to taste. I dress the way I feel. I “live and move and have my being” in the midst of a world of incredible advantage. Order and rhythm, bright light, and clean lines all round – these say I am modern. I am educated. I am doing well. All of this, this glittering now, it seems like my birthright.
Freedom is mine, that is for sure. It is my right. With it, I can make the people and things about me shift and shake. I can convince, and when that does not work or I cannot be bothered, I can coerce.
Yes, I can (pos sum). That is my right. I have this rare power, this gift – the peculiar threat of secular modernity. Everything that is done to me, is done at my command, or at least with my tacit approval. I do not resist. I do not need to; everything here reflects my will. If not, it stops. I can make it so it stops.
We are to believe that this is the pinnacle of human endeavour. That this is freedom. That we live at last in an age where all of history, the blood, the struggle, the glimpses of peace and light, these have come together and fallen apart.
Same-sex attracted men and women, in particular, we hear about our liberation all the time.
Women too. Even black men, we are all so free and lucky. We strain against the future and pop into the past, usually when it suits us, on a whim. We have these things: nostalgia, melodrama, celebrity, and romance.
They are real. We can have it all, all of the time. Or not at all. Whatever. We are fortunate. Still.
Lately I have longed for other things. I have wanted a child.
That is something this world – the world of Pride marches and “gay marriage” – cannot give to me, not legitimately, not so that I know it is right, and good, and natural.
I have also (perhaps predictably) become fixated on dogs. I think about how I would get one and how I would train him.
I fantasise about how faithful and clever and good he would be to us. Sitting outside. Next to me on the sofa. Alert, but wise. Energetic, but sure. A sight hound. A wolf hound. A surrogate son. I could get one. I probably will, if I want to get a dog. Still.
Lent rushes up like that shockwave across the Pacific.
It brings news of suffering, of other people and their loss and struggle. It brings Haiti and Chile. It brings Him. The Cross undoes modernity because the Passion is bleak and bloody and cruel. So is life. That is real.
There are few clean lines on Golgotha and little left standing in Port au Prince. There is so much darkness in Concepcion.
The rhythm of the world is blunt, staccato. It is shocking. It is not order. It is the centurion’s stomp, and the people’s wickedness drones (ison).
Lent, which starts with ash and, if you are lucky enough, with a worthy performance of Psalm 137 Super flumina Babylonis – Lent reveals the limit of modernity.
Why? Because there are not enough beautiful things in the world to sustain us – not enough for even one same-sex attracted man, let alone all the men on earth.
We live in a degraded reality, after the Fall.
We are broken too. There is only so much we can do. Rights do not come into this, this is about that feeling I get when I see a child and know he is not my son and that my son will not be.
There is a limit to the spaces, the apartments, the stages, and the parties one can beautify, for instance, in light of that fact.
One’s appearance can only be perfected, and then what? The social graces one can own and deploy? The men one can gather and discard? The silence. The money. Always, that lack. Our inheritance? Barren. We are sick of ourselves. Same-sex attracted men must look elsewhere, then, we must turn to God. For nourishment, we must turn to God.
For love, we must look at God’s wounds. This is what Lent is about.
Lest our souls turn dry, our hearts cold, we must fight the bitter and seek truth. We must serve truth. We must model love. I must model love. How? Submit. Learn. Serve. Love. People ask me all the time, as if I know, as if I made it up.
That is the script, though. It is not mine. It is His. It is Him. This is what I write: Love Him and live.
All of the rest of it passes away. That is Lent too: remember man that Thou art dust, and unto dust.