THE NEW FROM THE OLD
I'm back at the hospital, by way of the Arlington jail. I am numb, exhausted, and about as lost as a man can be - well at least as lost as I've ever been. I slept through my first day and night here, only rising for meals. Upon waking on my second day, I asked for the little Gideon Bible and received it at once. Yet again I flipped to a random passage and came upon Luke 15. This chapter contains two parables that were almost too much for me to handle at that moment: the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I both love and hate this exercise. The passages fill me with both hope and confusion. This one moved me to tears, such that I had to retreat to my room, where I wept for a long time.
The things I read and receive are hints and promises of redemption, but I am exhausted and cry out questioning when it will come. Right now, I feel I'm losing everything. I have a job I don't want, a wife I don't want, a home I don't want to return to, and a religion I don't want to return to. I feel utterly lost, a ghost in the shadows. Perhaps God doesn't want me to return, I wonder; maybe he has something else in mind. My thoughts drift toward Albuquerque, to investigate the Perennial Philosophy first hand. For I also read Jesus saying his disciples must lose father, mother, wife, and children - essentially anything they might be tempted to love or be devoted to above him - to follow him. I find myself in that position now, at the precipice of total loss. You can’t put new wine in old wineskins. At least that’s what I’m trying to tell myself, flowing with the irresistible tide to cope.