Blood

The text below is a post made by Deb Thornton to a Yahoogroup discussion group in which I participate.  She gave me her permission to post it here at Old Hickory's Weblog. Don't miss her mention of William Faulkner.  (Also, don't blame her for the content of the other posts on this page!)
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Blood

Since I am no longer distracted from distraction by distraction, maybe it's a sole nagging thought that breathes words from my hand of an Indian summer afternoon.  Or maybe it's having reached a political saturation point, a weather disaster saturation point, a soul shock wave shaking from the blood-soaked earth, newly freshened by the red tide of children going to school a world away.  Maybe it's teaching the writings of Martin Luther King and Flannery O'Connor with their calls for nonviolence and justice and maps of grace and mystery.  Maybe it's cooler temperatures, a mountain on fire early, reddened and fallen leaves.  Maybe it's years of insane lies, persuasions, mushroom clouds, being here downwind and facing more wind, post-moratorium.  Maybe it's the dancing child's blue innocent eyes, the colleagues conversation tenderness, the mother's appeal the father's nurturing, the heart's deepening.  Perhaps it's walking near-dawn in a broad mountain valley and the moon's crescent dipping an arcful of bluewhite halflight, Venus a spotlight close by, Orion and his dog standing guard among diminishing stars: a still photo interrupted by the sudden brief silhouette of a pelican flying across the moon's horns, calm and movement.  Maybe it's slitting the belly of a rainbow, ripping its gills from their point of attachment, tearing down its guts, then running my thumb up her spine to release the last of her pooled blood from her body, this fish I killed.  The blood on my hands.

For three years, since the buildings fell, I've sought, online and in print, answers to unprovoked questions.  Instead, I've learned that the checks and balances neither check nor balance; the boundaries are eroded by legislation and inattention.  Reality tv cloaks the demise of totalitarianism unbalanced the nuclear holocaust, unchecked the cold warriors who saw a clear path to world dominance and may have forged in their mind's manacles the great governmental paradox: the origin oftotalitarian democracy or democratic totalitarianism, if you prefer.  I don't think the architects of war mean well.  Now or ever.  On the world stage, much has been destroyed in a few years' time, and the echoes of echoes of a war declared on a sovereign nation create a new holocaust, the spawn of two words: pre-emptive defense.  Otherwise known as offense.  One grows nostalgic for détente.  The political agenda that assumes world dominance (with what restraint) through a marriage of military might and commercial colonialism may be a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, and its blood-dimmed tide may engulf us all.  Armageddon?  They may have recipe, blueprint, will, command.

And they can have it, my brothers and sisters in arms.  I'm not okay.  I'm tired.  We are all human beings.  Blood prefers to slip through veins, saltily performing the cellular chemistry of life.  I can wash the fish blood off my hands, but it's still spilt, dislodged from arteries, iron oxidizing on my cracked skin.  I can join the dying and rip my gills out, drown in air and human voices.  But in the shadows, the fallen leaves glimmer in the halflight, returning to earth from a season of green breathing.  The equinox approaches, an eyeblink of balance as the planet tilts.  The rain of grace moistens the parched earth.  The still-south wind whispers, "This is the Body of Christ in the earth? Not as the world giveth ..."

What will I give? And to whom? I still have those choices.  God help me, I still have those choices.  I can still choose not to fear, can turn to Faulkner's list: love and honor and pity and pride and sacrifice and honor and courage and hope and endurance.

Momentarily I will begin another afternoon of helping people discover and articulate their thoughts in their own voices; the writers in classes will read aloud to one another, pooling their strengths.  Tonight I'll walk the receding lake shore, binoculars in hand. I'll see white pelicans with black wingtips skimming the surface, killdeer panicking, a tall discalced child with new teeth and a sidekick of Welsh corgi barreling full tilt in the water, the proud quiet mother-ship keeping close watch, black-necked stilts, avocets with fading red heads, rafts of ibis, an egret or two, maybe a heron, billions of gnats, swallows not keeping up.  By chance, some ducks, a watersnake; surely a beach littered with shells and feathers.  A sunset.  The red end of another day.  Fatigue in mind and knees, I'll bow and thank a loving God for this day, for the soul in it.  I'll pray for the rain of grace to continue to fall on the sinless earth and its denizens, for the rain to wash the blood from my hands.  I will marvel: "This is the world You died for."

And tomorrow, one cherished and transitory moment after another, I'll take another look, peering into time and space for a glimpse of the so-loved world.

Deb Thornton