Triage.

I need a weekend away from myself. I'm too tired. I need someone to fight for me. When I need to rest on the battlefield, I recall these words, one of my favourite passages from the Bible.

Exodus 14:14 The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

But what happens when what I need to fight against is within me, IS me? This isn't about Satan, about being possessed by demons, or any of those fear-tactics of the Christian faith which make even the slightest instance of depression or anxiety into a huge catastrophe. If the language may be pardoned, this is simply about how fucking hard it is to live in this world. For all of us. This is about perfectionism, about expectations, about deadlines, papers, committees, volunteering, friendships, war, crime, safety, disease, taxes, rape, murder, aging, power outages, having to wash your hair, having to get out of bed and go to class, angry bus drivers, old men and women with sad eyes, obituaries, job announcements, dirty dishes in the sink, unmade beds, unfolded laundry. It's about the trauma of having to BE in the world. Don't get me wrong. There's beauty to be had. Poppies grow among crosses, row on row, and something karmic balances out the weight of the cross on your spine, but there are times where the cross seems to melt into you, become your spine, and you walk around with this leaden weight in your back, in your scapulae, down into your elbows and clasped hands.

It's times like this that I think of Jesus.

My concept of Jesus is probably blasphemous to every devout Catholic or fundamentalist Christian, but nevertheless...as I wrote in my first post, Jesus is like having a quiet confidant. There's no "fear of the Lord" in my heart. There is only love, there is the attempt to find some sort of force to stop the hammers of my soul from striking too many notes at once. The historical Jesus must have been a wonderful person to be around, very charismatic, vague in some of his rhetoric, quite the enigma. There's a sense of drama about him that rivals the best Shakespearean tragedies performed at Stratford or in Ashland.

But Jesus, the man. Jesus, who was at one point flesh and blood and heartbeat, nailed to planks of wood...that's the Jesus that Deepak Chopra speaks of in "The Third Jesus" - a book that has made me feel much less afraid of how I have accepted Christ, made me more certain of how I'd like to be Christ-like.

To be Christ-like is to be worthy of suffering, to find meaning in it. This is what Viktor Frankl describes in "Man's Search for Meaning," the only book that has ever made me sob openly and unabashedly. To be Christ-like is to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. Or at the very least, scuffle with them, converse with them, sit with our troubles and embrace them. I'm not suggesting passivity or unconditional love and forgiveness of those who have trespassed against us. I can't remember where it is in the Bible, that Jesus says if someone hits you seven times, but repents seven times, you have to forgive them. But that's the thing: there needs to be repentance, and repentance needs to be profound and meaningful, not trite and useless. Determining that repentance, however, is the sticky and messy stuff that Christians are still wrestling with, 2000-plus years later.

To be Christ-like is to engage in the fight, even if at times you need others to help you. To be Christ-like is to be noble in your suffering, and even if it kills you, by gum, I'd hope that some small fraction, some iota of your being was holding on as much as it could. To try. This is all that is asked of us. To live.

I know, it's hard. But then I see the feet again, the hem of his robe. I could almost reach out and touch it, feel the coarse material under my calloused fingertips, revel in the serene flaxen colour, flecks of dark brown woven into the fabric. Something inside me feels not-frozen but still as a mill-pond, at least for the time being, for tonight, for this one sleep, for this one little gap I'm in.

To bed, now, shroud myself in the safety of the blankets, curl my knees into my chest, hug my teddy bear close to my heart and breathe. I can allow myself to sleep in triage, in the safe gap where someone will sort things out for me.