Major/Minor

I’ve lost track of time. And in that time I’ve felt six months’ wages on my heart. And while I’ve been finding new ways of loving Jesus — ways I needed and ways I’m learning — there is part of this heart that’s since left.

I write that hurting.

There’s a vacancy. A void. An open-ness so wrong and painful.

As I write, Thrice’s album Major/Minor fills my ears. It’s the album that’s brought me here tonight. I’ve recently been traveling, and in more ways than one. Maybe wandering is a better word. The past six days I’ve driven from New Jersey to California across plains and over mountains, through snow and sun, in singing and in silence. And after driving three thousand miles I’m still not far from where I started.

I am the other prodigal, more crafty than his brother. For all my traveling, I am home in the worst way. I hope you understand. See, I wander without moving: the better son, the older brother. I’ve learned to leave without getting lost. I’ve found the grave and how to flirt with her, how to land a kiss and not die. But she’s had her wages.

Death is my mistress. And she’s wearing off on me.

I remember rare moments when my heart’s deepest dissatisfaction was met, however fragile its meeting, somewhere between the lines of that beautiful book, like some secret breathed beneath the page, hiding behind the words. I recall its haunting. I can feel my risen pulse on those nights the lines would rob my eyes of sleep and send waves of tears in exchange.

But I am someone else tonight. I am somewhere else. Bring me home, just the way you did at first, the way you’ve done before and again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QFD-PhJRsk  //  ”Words In The Water” by Thrice, Major/Minor.

I am praying this song, and am once more reminded of home, of you, of life. I’ve wandered, cheated, and died. Speak light into my darkness. Breathe life into this dust. I am dry and disappointed, lonely and derailed. I feel wounded and deceived by you, tricked into a hope you don’t mean to fill. I am afraid to stay with you, and only more to leave for good. But your quietness with me is so unsettling. You’ve become so hard to find, and I’ve become too weary to look. I’m hurt by you and your erratic, no-show tendencies. I hate your games. But I know you. You are horrible and beautiful. You wake the dead and heal the dying. I am both.

 

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